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Ally Fogg

Ally Fogg is a UK-based freelance writer and journalist, whose day job includes a weekly column on Comment is Free at www.guardian.co.uk and miscellaneous scribbles elsewhere, mostly on issues of UK politics and social justice. This blog is dedicated to exploring gender issues from a male perspective, unshackled from any dogmatic ideology. Ally is often accused of being a feminist lapdog and an anti-feminist quisling; a misogynist and a misandrist; a mangina and a closet MRA, and concludes that the only thing found in pigeonholes is pigeon shit. He can be contacted most easily through www.allyfogg.co.uk or @allyfogg on Twitter. About this blog

EVENTS

Note: I’m already concerned by the cult of personality growing around Elliot Rodger. While acknowledging that all discussions, including this one, risk adding to that, I’ve opted not to link to any of his YouTube videos, comments or his manifesto. I do not doubt you can find them yourself if you must.

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Katherine Cooper, aged 22, and 19-year-old Veronica Weisswere shot dead while standing outside a university sorority. Christopher Michael-Ross, 20, died while shopping in a deli. As I write, the names of three other victims of the murder spree in Santa Barbara, California remain unknown. [See note below] As so often with these cases, it is sickening but unavoidable that while the details of those squandered lives will soon be forgotten by most, the name of Elliot Rodger will forever lurk somewhere in the depths of our memories.

There is so much to this tragedy that we do not yet know, but conversely we already seem to know so much. It is never wise to leap to assumptions about the motivations of violent individuals. In the case of Rodger, this is proving almost impossible. Rarely has a crime of this nature appeared to have such an open and shut motivation.

In the first reports, he was described by witnesses on the scene as ‘a madman’ or ‘crazy.’ This was underlined soon after when it emerged that he had been under some form of psychiatric treatment. This was never an adequate explanation. Mental illness alone very, very rarely drives people to kill. Hate, bitterness and rage, on the other hand, does so daily. Rodger may or may not have been ill, he may or may not had diagnostic label on his personality or neurological function, we do not know. What we do know, without question, is that he was spitting with misogyny.

Shortly before the killings began, Rodger uploaded a series of increasingly horrific YouTube rants, in which he explained that he was going to kill women – specifically blonde, sorority girls – as revenge for their refusal to have sex with him. He had left hints of his plans, alongside overt race hate, on several other forums, under his own name. He had uploaded a 140-page justification for his crime to the internet, providing the world not only what mental health professionals call a ‘complete history’ but also detailed, gruesome details of his planned massacre, giving it the title ‘My Twisted World’. In keeping with the cliches of a cheap movie script, Rodger turned out to be the son of a successful Hollywood director. He was a good-looking, rich kid who drove a BMW and attended film premieres. And from his own words, he was a bitter, angry, hate-filled virgin.

It also emerged that he was an active member of a notoriously misogynistic internet forum for men called ‘PUA Hate.’ Several bloggers and online news sites immediately began describing him as the ‘MRA shooter.’ Strictly speaking, this is probably inaccurate. There is a corner of the internet known disparagingly as ‘the manosphere’ which has several distinct compass points, united only by their shared misogyny. While people and ideas certainly seep between them, in practice they have very distinct interests, and often spend almost as much energy hating each other as they do hating feminists. Among several other manosphere communities, there are men’s rights activists, (MRAs) who mostly deal in political issues and gender relations, and there are pick-up artists (PUAs), who strictly concern themselves with sex, specifically how to manipulate women into bed.

Beyond those groups however, there are strange fringes such as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) and those who describe themselves as ‘Incels’ meaning ‘involuntary celibates.’ These are men who are not just angry because women won’t have sex with them, they’re even angry with the PUAs who suggest that women might have sex with them. It was in this last group that Rodgers appeared to have found a community.

In Rodger’s manifesto there is no sign of even a slight interest in gender politics. He does not use the vocabulary or logic of MRAs, there is no ranting at ‘feminazis’ or other tell-tale signs of MRA ideology. Indeed, it is striking that the manifesto, unlike that of Anders Breivik, reveals no kind of political consciousness at all. For Rodgers, this all appears to have been entirely personal.

Was Rodger radicalised by what he read online? It is likely that while his anger and hatred were consuming him, he sought out those he considered like minds, rather than vice versa. We may never know. He says in his manifesto that the PUA Hate site confirmed his thinking:

The Spring of 2013 was also the time when I came across the website PUAHate.com. It is a forum full of men who are starved of sex, just like me. Many of them have their own theories of what women are attracted to, and many of them share my hatred of women, though unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it. Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are. Most of the people on that website have extremely stupid opinions that I found very frustrating, but I found a few to be quite insightful.

I sense an inevitability to the debate that will unfold in coming days. Feminists and their allies are already spinning this as the work of an MRA and a consequence of men’s rights ideology. MRAs, I do not doubt, will become defensive and probably find some way to blame feminism – some PUAs are already going down that route. I don’t think any of that is meaningful or helpful, and may provide a convenient moral escape route for some people who should really be looking to their own hearts and consciences.

Rodger does not appear to have identified as an MRA, and a debate as to whether or not he should be so described will be a pedantic distraction. The ugly truth is that, across much of the manosphere, his rantings are not especially unusual. Somewhere on the internet right this very moment – whether on an Insel site or an MRA site or an MGTOW site or Twitter or Facebook or an atheist forum, it really doesn’t matter – an angry young man will be spitting out his hatred of bitches, whores and sluts. Could Rodger have been dissuaded had he been challenged, rather than indulged in his rants? Frankly I doubt it, he would merely have dismissed his detractors as yet more weak cowards, but can we be sure? I would challenge those who laugh along with violent misogynistic fantasies online to imagine looking in the eyes of the families and friends of Rodgers’ victims and declaring their consciences to be clear.

There is another sense in which the easy explanatory narrative may be dangerous and misleading. To blame either mental illness or online misogyny for these crimes is to dodge the question of where those deranged beliefs, the anger, the nihilism, the hatred originated. Spree killers, as Michael Kimmel recently pointed out in Angry White Men, are invariably racked by aggrieved entitlement – they believe they have an inalienable right to status, to success and to sex. When those natural rights fail to materialise, they become angry and violent. But there is another aspect to the profile of a spree killer, which Rodger also describes in detail in his manifesto. Like pretty much all known spree killers, Elliot Rodger was systematically and severely bullied by his peers. The boys beat him while the girls looked on and laughed. When a rampant narcissistic entitlement meets the social humiliation and mockery of the bullying victim, the results can occasionally be deadly.

I say this cautiously as an outside observer, but it seems to me that whenever tragedies like this occur in the USA, the media and political discourses hone in on gun ownership (entirely reasonably, I stress) and on teen culture – whether rock music, video games or violent movies. In this case we can probably add online men’s forums. I”ve yet to see serious attention be devoted to the culture of bullying that would appear to continue unabated, even actively encouraged as hazing rituals, within American schools.

Nothing can be done to bring back the victims of Elliot Rodger, or undo his evil. The best we can do as a society (including the international online community) is to ask ourselves what we might do to prevent another such incident occurring. Answering that question demands that we look far beyond the quick and easy solutions, however tempting they might be.

NOTE: The names of Rodger’s murdered room mates have now also been released. Please spare a thought for the friends and families of Weihan Wang (22), Chen Yuang Hong (20) and George Chen (19)

On a forum on BodyBuilding.com, users were even more confrontational. When Rodger complained this month about seeing a “short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic [with] a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat,” other users responded to say that he was racist, that his jealously was ugly and that the secret to getting girls was to “be fun to be around” not to have money and a BMW. A user who went by the handle dtugg was especially critical of Rodger. He had apparently seen Rodger’s YouTube videos. “I see you got rid of those serial killer-esc videos on Youtube,” he wrote. Rodger responded saying his parents made him take them down, but that he planned to repost them. “I’m not trying to be mean, but the creepy vibe that you give off in those videos is likely the major reason that you can’t get girls,” responded dtugg.

Notably, though, these attempts to dissuade Rodger come from a bodybuilding forum, which isn’t in and of itself part of the “manosphere.” Considering Rodger’s beliefs, well, I have to concur with you that if he didn’t think of himself as a “manospherian,” he certainly talked like one, both in reference to the misogyny *and* the racism.

(also, small correction: It’s not “disparagingly” known as the manosphere, it’s what manospherians themselves call it).

Beyond misogynist (and he was certainly that), he had developed into a true misanthrope, though his misanthropy might have come by way of perceived female rejection. He thought that men had let him down as well, by not assisting him to…get laid, basically.

Like most spree killings, this one defies normal description. It would be great to find one single cause, but I doubt one is forthcoming. Normal people simply don’t respond in this manner, no matter what their circumstances become, and how bad could his circumstances have been? He was a child of privilege, living an affluent life in a beautiful city. Then again, hasn’t that become something of a characteristic? These guys (to vast preponderance) materialize out of the banality of modern existence. At the end of the day, maybe the only thing you can say is that they’re bad seeds.

We really do not know enough about this guy to determine what factors caused him to go on a shooting rampage. By his writings we can see he had a lot of anger, an extreme sense of entitlement, a need to be special. Bullying may well be a factor but the vast majority of victims of bullying do not kill. It is too easy to focus on this one individual and try to find a reason he did this. What is more valuable and much harder to do I those cultural factors that have deleterious effect on everyone, such as misogyny, bullying, viewing women as objects. In terms of gun we need to challenge the gun culture ideas that everything can be solved by having a gun

Clearly quite the solipsist. The world, for him, does not seem to have existed outside his head. Other people are paper ciphers – women stuck-up sluts, men dumb brutes. His extreme selfishness and jealousy seem to have been apparent even from quite a young age, long before puberty (insofar as his dull autobiography can be relied upon). He takes up hobbies not for any inherent joy, but to promote his image. He will not work retail, as his mother wishes, because he’s “an intellectual destined for greatness”. When his mother does not wish to marry her new rich boyfriend, he tells her that she should sacrifice her happiness for his own. He’s a strange monster, disgusting and pitiable by turns. He seems to have murdered his male housemates not out of any particular grudge against them (beyond the general hatred he had for other men, particularly sexually active men), but simply because they were in his way, an impediment to his grand revenge against women. At one point he even plans to murder his own younger half-brother, to avoid the humiliation of seeing him grow up in happiness.

I think it’s far beyond the state of psychological science to know how – if at all – such craziness can be treated. It does seem as though warning flags were missed at a very late stage, and that should be investigated.

Excellent post, especially for all the temptations you managed not to fall into. The focus on bullying is new – to me – and sounds like a productive place to look.

As for ‘entitlement’, well this chap obviously felt entitled, but what can you do with that that might help?
If someone watches everybody else having fun all over the place while he never gets even the smallest look at the things he longs for, some degree of anger and bitterness is pretty natural. The difference is that normal people manage to keep some perspective and do not get consumed by it.

The sense of entitlement comes from the question: “Everybody else gets it. Why not me, then, with all my good qualities?” Answers might be:

– “You do deserve sex, just like the others. The reason you do not get any must be that the world is unjust, the women are all bitches, …” That is the easiest answer to give yourself, but of course that way leads on to misogyny and beyond.

– “You do not deserve sex, because you are a nasty little creep. Up to you to change if you are unhappy.” Might well be correct, but most people would refuse to believe this, whatever the evidence.

– “No man is entitled to sex. Celilbacy is the norm, sex is something that happens to the fortunate few or for short, exceptional periods. This is what everybody gets, get used to it.” With age and disillusionment this can seem convincing, but it is harder if you are still young and hopeful, or if you see that lots of people are in fact getting the things you are missing.

– “You are OK, you will get it too, don’t worry. Just make a few simple changes to yourself, keep trying without getting pushy, wait for the right person, and you will be laughing”. Might be the advice that gives the best practical results, but not everybody will succeed. And when you know from years of experience that nothing helps, it is hard to convince yourself. It can even sound as if somebody is taking the piss.

Frankly, I doubt it’s all that relevant in terms of preventing future Rodgers. You can talk about entitlement, and also a sense of failure, and “great expectations,” etc. until you’re blue in the face, but I think all your analyses will be confounded by cases like Rodgers. Perhaps you can raise the threshold on insane behavior by identifying causal factors, but in terms of stopping Rodgers, all your efforts may well come to naught. To a large extent, normalizing the problem by finding causal factors is exactly what organizations like NRA are counting on.

I can only assume this was about the ego wound of not having got a girl into bed rather than missing out on the act it’s self. The guy could have easily gone to escort agency or something if he was desperate just to get laid

For example various media outlets reported him being subscribed to mra channels. In fact the only political channel he was subscribed to was TYT. I think it is pretty hard to describe this in other ways than lying, since his channel is after all public.

The sense of entitlement comes from the question: “Everybody else gets it. Why not me, then, with all my good qualities?”

The correct response to that is that nobody is entitled to sex,. nobody has a right to sex. End of story.

As you rightly say, most people in that situation manage their emotions. What can you do with someone who is irrationally obsessed with an irrational belief? Very little, beyond refusing to indulge their irrationality.

In Rodger’s manifesto there is no sign of even a slight interest in gender politics. He does not use the vocabulary or logic of MRAs, there is no ranting at ‘feminazis’ or other tell-tale signs of MRA ideology. Indeed, it is striking that the manifesto, unlike that of Anders Breivik, reveals no kind of political consciousness at all. For Rodgers, this all appears to have been entirely personal.

This is enough to make me cautious. While I don’t really like MRA as a movement because of the proportion of nasty people and false views of gender equality as a zero-sum-game that I encounter as I meet people who are MRA’s, I have met enough that were decent that I don’t automatically make the assumption. It could be said that this guy could have been encouraged by the tone of many that call themselves MRA’s, but I don’t think that is something that could be argued persuasively.

Unfortunately, a family I know are dealing with a teenage relative who may well turn out like Elliot Rodger. He is also unhappy and isolated. But it isn’t because he’s being bullied– it’s because the other kids at his high school are shunning him for bullying them.

Naturally, this kid sees himself as the victim. The other kids “just can’t take a joke,” or “they started it” or “I didn’t even touch him.” (The last, after he put his hands behind his back and shoved someone against a counter with his chest. Of course, the victim put his hands out to push him away– making the kid, in his own mind, the victim.)

Sympathizing with this kid because he’s the victim of bullying would be about the worst thing people could do. He needs to be able to see how he is creating his own problems with his aggressive behavior, not get his self-pity reinforced.

So, please don’t just substitute “victim of bullying” for “MRA” or “mentally deranged.” The only simple thing that could be done to stop these horrible tragedies would be to make guns, and especially big clip magazines, harder to get. No one-size-fits-all solution to their emotional problems will do anything.

Actually I should expand on my “nasty people” from #17. I don’t see people who just act mean as counting in this context. I have had plenty of arguments with folks who were rude, insulting and had good logic and reason (it was actually kind of fun). It’s mostly the ones that display black and white hatred of women, characterize feminism in dishonest terms, act like every reference to a problem for women is some sort of means to detract from men’s problems, ignore the bi-directional interrelationships that maintain gender problems, and more that I can’t stand. I’m no delicate snowflake and just being a meanie is not enough to get me to reject positions.

Firstly I don’t see how your friend’s kid’s situation is applicable to Rodger’s. secondly as ally pointed out in the Charles Manson/roman Polanski blog there isn’t a dichotomy between trying to understand what drives a person to do something awful and blaming them for it

As an aside if you’re afraid that kid might become a serial killer because he pushes around people at school you probably don’t have the right mindset to help him

I’ve never met the kid. I’ve only talked (and, mostly, listened) to family members who care about him deeply. They’re the people who are really frightened about what he may become. The pattern of “I’m isolated, I’m lonely, and it’s everybody else’s fault,” is the one that seems to match Elliot Rogers.

I don’t think it was misogyny that caused the violence. You can find oodles of misogynists, that causes asshole’s sure but you need MORE than hatred to actually go and kill. Something had to have snapped, or been born with a severe problem with how his mind thinks compared to the super duper overwhelming majority of other people. I’ve known countless misogynists, misandrists, racists, etc and whilst they’re assholes, I’ve known none whom actually go n kill or physically harm others. Most just ranted about stuff and were usually in a lot of pain themselves and suffered from confirmation bias like crazy.

I’m sure he drank water too, h2o consumers beware! Misogyny played a role but if he didn’t hate women, quite frankly he’d probably find some other cause to go on a killing spree for. As one commenter says, he moved past misogyny into misanthropy, in fact his manifesto I believe said he was targeting MALES in his first attacks and fantasized it seems about being the sole living male to get his pick of women (or at least asked if other PUAhate members would do that). Misogyny and loneliness, maybe even being treated badly by women may have triggered him but there are probably a lot of triggers in life which he could stumble on. I’m sure someone could write an article promoting legal access to sex workers as a way that could have saved 6? people from his rampage.

I’d be interested to know if there are any genes in common amongst mass murderers, or psychological profiles? Is it a major lack of empathy? Or just pushed too far and they had a small tolerance?

generally I think the kind of violence you’re describing is different from what Rodgers did in two important regards. Firstly I don’t think kids usually push around other kids because they hate them, I think they do it because they think it’s fun and haven’t thought to consider the other kid’s feelings. Secondly punching something and shooting something from several feet away is are just totally different …I don’t just mean because one does more damage, I mean they just feel substantially different on a visceral level.

“family members who care about him deeply. They’re the people who are really frightened about what he may become” that’s even worse if it’s his family that see him this way

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, looks like a duck, and has one of those freaky duck penises, naturally, we should all assume it’s an aardvark because it doesn’t hang out at the most popular duck lakes, right?

“The best we can do as a society (including the international online community) is to ask ourselves what we might do to prevent another such incident occurring. Answering that question demands that we look far beyond the quick and easy solutions, however tempting they might be.”

The sensationalism of incidents such as this make it seem more likely that they will continue. His actions, and his motivations, aren’t really anything new. Ted Bundy was as fuelled by misogyny was he was by anything else. The media made Bundy infamous, but of course, the media only gives the public what it wants to consume.

Rodger will be a flash in the pan relative to Bundy, but he will posthumously get what he wanted: the international media attention of a shocked and frightened public.

Individuals such as Rodger, and the Columbine high school murderers, don’t just want to kill, they want to gain a form of media immortality. And they have succeeded.

Moving slightly off-topic, but still definitely related, I contend that the 7/7 bombers here in the UK were driven in part by politics, but also by an intoxicating blend of hunger for media attention and nihilism.

The role of the wretched manosphere in this tragedy is probably quite limited – but the murderer in this case will have undoubtedly taken solace in knowing that his misogyny was shared and celebrated in some quarters and that his actions will be looked at approvingly by a wide range of misfits from across the web.

His positing himself as the victim will resonate with other, similarly persecution-complex inadequates. Feminism (idiotically conflated by anti-feminists as femaleness) is always to blame in some way.

I think part of whats behind this is indifference, I mean people who knew him, friends, his family, the school employers etc. Didnt they see, didnt they wanted to see or they simply didnt care? I mind my own business kind of mentality? Its easy to cry after whatever happen, when they could have avoided everything if they just cared.

I dont think he was a misogynist, because he wanted women. He wanted women because he liked them, not because he was disgusted by them. But everything went the other way, so the rage and hate started to grow, uintill something made him snap (probably). Now IMO instead fantasize on MRA, PUA’s or whateverelse…..lets find out why he went to those places first? bullism? emotive bullism? to much indifference and obnoxiousness? people dont just go killer out of the blue….something most have triggered this and maybe its not a big event, but maybe many small negatives episodes that summed all in the shootings.

You can find oodles of misogynists, that causes asshole’s sure but you need MORE than hatred to actually go and kill.

I don’t think that this logic holds, especially the way that you analogize to water. Hatred is a prerequisite for these sorts of things. It’s part of the fuel that drives the decision. Irrational hatred of a group is a warning sign that can be rationally used to worry about actions that stem from the hatred. It is not enough to jump to a conclusion that someone will go on a shooting spree, but it is a warning sign that society should not just ignore.

I’d be interested to know if there are any genes in common amongst mass murderers, or psychological profiles? Is it a major lack of empathy? Or just pushed too far and they had a small tolerance?

I’m sure there are some. I have tourette’s and that is associated with intense emotions that are difficult to control, so you see complaints of rage attacks among parents of kids with TS (we gain control as a group, the crime stats for people with TS are the same as the population at large outside of police reacting to something that looks disturbing in a knee-jerk fashion). That implies a system for rage with components under selection. But such genes would still need to be combined with a set of experiences that could make someone see a group (that can include the whole of society) as a threat.

The correct response to that is that nobody is entitled to sex,. nobody has a right to sex. End of story.

Absolutely and indubitably true – but quite unlikely to have any grip on somebody asking himself the ‘Why not me?’ question. ‘You should not be feeling that way’ is never convincing, no matter how true it is.

What can you do with someone who is irrationally obsessed with an irrational belief? Very little,

Indeed. Which is why I think that working on people’s ‘sense of entitlement’ is unlikely to bear fruit. We need to think of with something better.

It doesn’t really matter if he was an MRA or a feminist for that matter. He was a fucking lunatic. If you’ve seen his YouTube video, you could tell he was a smug, entitled, misanthrope, with delusions of grandeur. He thought of women as nothing more than objects, and other men as nothing more than ignorant brutes. If he had MRA or feminist leanings, they were irrelevant. If his intent was purely misogynistic he would’ve only aimed for women, but he didn’t.

The fact that he spent time on anti-PUA sites as well is meaningless to derive culpability. It’s pointless.

It’s the same thing over and over when stuff like this happens. Find a scapegoat. But he was subscribed to TYT on his YouTube channel, and he drove a BMW. Clearly these are elements that needs to be included. Or, you know. Maybe not.

Hmm: So far of his murders: 4 male ( a bystander and 3 stabbed repeatedly in his apartment) and 2 female. I don’t know the breakdown of his wounded victims though at least one with a minor wound is male because I’ve seen interviews. He did try to enter a sorority but they (thankfully) didn’t open the door he was pounding on. He probably would have gotten far more victims – even though he would have been isolated in one spot- had he gotten inside. His various manifestos at over the years were hosted on PUAhate.com, Bodybuilding.com, and Youtube. He seems to have hated everyone (at one point he muses about killing all males so he can have all the women to himself) but his special hatred was reserved for women and sexually successful men. The list of websites in his profiles and on his (used only for one post) blog do not reveal any links to mainstream MRA sites. While some people on comments threads gave him good advice , others made fun of him or condemned him. He got very limited ‘support’ for any of his beliefs (esp the ones involving mass murder) even in the communities he participated in. I’ve read his “manifesto” , watched his last youtube vid and checked out his Facebook. This guy seems like a mentally ill narcissist.

For the Brits and any Europeans who may not be aware:
Prostitution is illegal in every US state except Nevada and it is only legal in two counties (subdivisions of a State) there.
I agree this guy could have had sex with a sex worker (if he didn’t feel that was ‘beneath’ him, this guy was VERY snooty), however this was mostly a function of his privileged economic class. Many poor sexually unsuccessful men here literally have no recourse because they can’t afford to fly out to Nevada , let alone pay a few hundred bucks an hour.

– That just plain sex with or without deeper emotions is equally easy for men and women to get? The fact that men, not women, are widely willing to pay for it, and women, not men, tend to complain about being pestered for it, makes that sound unlikely.

– That only mutual lust counts as sex, so that e.g. prostitution is not sex but something else? That is not an argument, but a word game.

– That there would be no problems if only men would stop wanting anything more or different than the womenfolk around them want to do? True as it stands, but that brings us into ‘you should not be feeling that’ territory, which is something that is rightly condemned in other contexts.

It’s crystal clear what I am saying. Non sex-work sex is *not* a commodity. It is *not* something that women “control access” of and “give” to men. It is something that two (or occasionally more) people do together for reasons that are diverse, but almost always involve physical pleasure and frequently the juxtaposition between physical pleasure and emotional intimacy.

If a person views sex as something that women “give” to men, then that person is immature and, as we have seen, frustrated, angry and prone to paranoia, rate and hatred.

This could go round and round in circles, the bottom line is that human beings have a right to sexual integrity. To dismiss a woman as selfish (or evil,oppressive, hateful) because she doesn’t “give” her sex to a man is immature, misogynistic, self-absorbed and a ticket into a cul-de-sac of bitterness and wretched unhappiness.

Is a misanthrope a misogynist? If someone hates all people, it stands to reason that they hate women too, however to frame a misanthrope as a misogynist is dishonest, because it implies that they only hate women.
Was he an MRA? Some people have him labelled as one but I have seen absolutely no evidence that he was from his manifesto or his videos. Apparently he participated in an anti-PUA forum. I’m not an expert on MRAs but from what I have read I thought MRAs and PUAs were an overlapping group or at least agreed with each other on their attitudes on women (at least that’s what feminists have been saying).
I read the last part of his manifesto, detailing the last year or so of his life. He does write hateful things about women, but also wrote a great deal of hateful things about men, especially the ones that were “getting” the girls he wasn’t.
He wrote about his younger sister and her boyfriend. There was little resentment directed toward her compared to the resentment and hostility directed at the boyfriend.
When he wrote about the planned murders, his plan was to first kill his male roommates, which is what he did. In fact he killed a total of 5 men (including himself) and only 2 women.
Something that pisses me off is how many of the anti-male feminist ideologues are swooping in on this story like a mob of vultures on a rotting corpse because they think it bolsters their preconceived dogma about “toxic masculinity”, facts be damned.
How pathetic.

Which, by the normal rules of logic, implies that I must be either stupid or in bad faith. Was that necessary?

human beings have a right to sexual integrity. To dismiss a woman as selfish (or evil,oppressive, hateful) because she doesn’t “give” her sex to a man is [wrong]

I quite agree – as amended.

If a person views sex as something that women “give” to men, then that person is immature and, as we have seen, frustrated, angry and prone to paranoia, rate and hatred.

I do view sex as something that women give to men, in a manner of speaking at least. Which means that I must be immature and prone to paranoia. You know, if you want a polite conversation here you have a strange way of going about it.

To expand a bit, I think it is fair to say it is easier for a woman than for a man to get to sex, once she has decided that she wants it. Women meet more willing partners and less reluctance. To me that means that women do control the access to sex, in the sense that their accept is often the rate-limiting step on the way to get there. It is certainly the life experience for a lot of individual men that they would say yes to almost anyone, but nobody ever accepts their advances, let alone asks them. It is also a fact that men are brought up with the idea that you need to be active and try hard if you want to get anywhere, and women are brought up with the idea that there are a lot of men out there that would like to have sex with them, and they should be prepared for unwanted advances.

So, where am I wrong? Do the sexes have the same chances, the same expectations, attach the same value to sex? Do lots of women suffer from the problem that they really want sex, they are not too particular with whom, but they just cannot find a stiff prick willing to oblige?
Or am I right on the facts, but you think it is morally wrong to wish for sex above and beyond what the intrinsic lusts of the available partners will provide? Or what?

When Hasan killed at Fort Hood, they said it was Islam that motivated him. When Furrow shot up a synagogue, it was his anti-semitism. When Breivik slew 77, his radical politics were blamed. Now Rodger and his misogyny.

But what motivated One Goh, a Korean christian, to murder other Korean christians? He’d been kicked out of college, is what. What motivated Adam Lanza? Can not liking Mondays be identified as the doctrinal motivation for Brenda Spencer?

The common thread: all were disturbed people who believed their perceived grievances against the world justified — demanded, even — the killing of strangers. Who they end up selecting to blame is largely arbitrary.

I don’t see bullying as the key element. True, all future mass murderers are social outcasts or misfits, and nearly all social outcasts & misfits get bullied. But not all victims of bullying turn into mass murderers.

Easy access to guns does make it easier to kill a lot of people at once. And guns do appeal as totemic icons of power & revenge to someone who feels aggrieved and powerless. However, while guns may be necessary (though Tim McVeigh made do with a rental van and some fertilizer), they are not sufficient for a mass murder to occur.

The key element is the mass murderer him/herself — more specifically, their mental illness that leads them to view mass murder as justified. Sane people — even sane, armed, ex-bullied people — do not commit mass murder.

Rodger’s public statements about suicide and murder ought to have earned him an immediate 5150. The police were remiss in failing to meet that legal obligation. Ending such lackadaisical tolerance of the dangerously mentally ill is what will deter future occurrences of these incidents.

“Do lots of women suffer from the problem that they really want sex, they are not too particular with whom, but they just cannot find a stiff prick willing to oblige?”

with regard too particular I strongly suspect that when guys bitch online about no girls wanting to have sex with the, what they often actually mean is “non of the thin, pretty girls in their mid 20s want to sleep with me”

I would say that his reasons for hating men show it to be a facet of his misogyny rather than just genral misanthrope

That is what other people are saying too that haven’t read any of his manifesto, presumably because it fits their preconceived notions.
He had no plans to kill his mother or his sister and doesn’t focus his hostility to them. He does talk about killing his little brother and his step mother though, and he not only planned to kill his male roommates first, he actually carried that out.
Read his manifesto, he had plenty of hatred to go around to men and women both, he hated men who had successful relationships and couples as well as (desirable) women.
This guy had some serious, complex issues that his family and more than one mental health couldn’t sort out for him.
I find it beyond offensive that people are playing gender politics with this tragedy. Blaming this on “toxic masculinity” or “patriarchal attitudes” is worse than simplistic or simple minded, it’s the same kind of gender bigotry as the worst misogynist has, only it is directed toward males.

Matt Cavanaugh #49 wrote (in part): “The common thread [of the examples he gave]: all were disturbed people who believed their perceived grievances against the world justified — demanded, even — the killing of strangers. Who they end up selecting to blame is largely arbitrary.”

@Thil #53, commenting on Matt Cavanaugh #49, wrote: “I don’t think I buy the logic that you have to crazy to want to do something awful.”

Not to imagine doing something awful, in the heat of anger. Presumably many people could, and have, found themselves in that situation. (Cf. another FtB blogger recently imagine carrying knives to kill Christians who might try to convert him were he unexpectedly gravely injured; this was in the context of being very angry about such a conversion scene depicted in a movie.)

But to develop a plan to kill random people, feeling completely justified in this plan, and acting on it? That’s someone who is “disturbed”, pretty much by definition.

Interesting piece Ally. I also reckon that Monbiot’s discussion on ‘the rich kids of Instagram’ probably has a bearing here.

One query I would raise, though, would be this:

When you write:

“There is a corner of the internet known disparagingly as ‘the manosphere’ which has several distinct compass points, united only by their shared misogyny” it surely follows that you are making a generalisation, in effect, about MRAs being misogynist. Is this not a direct violation of the Hetpat First Directive, which as far as I understood it, was meant to cover all contributors to the blog, yourself included? But perhaps I’m missing something here (would not be the first time!) So if not, why not?

If you can get an antisemite authoritarian with good speaking skills to convince others to eliminate groups of people that he and his culture find objectionable (a behavior quite consistent with our history), I have no problem thinking that what this guy did is part of standard-issue human being. Disturbed =/= mentally ill. Neither does skewed and a great many other modifiers.

I would say that his reasons for hating men show it to be a facet of his misogyny rather than just genral misanthrope

But he ended up killing more men than women, two of which were his roommates – both men.

Saying his hatred of men was a “facet of his misogyny” when 5 men are dead kind of undermines their deaths, don’t you think?

#53

I don’t think I buy the logic that you have to crazy to want to do something awful

“To do something awful” doesn’t describe it very well, but I don’t think you expect a perfectly sane person to both plot in advance and carry out cold-blooded murder. Then there is something in your mind that has snapped. He claims he did it because he was bullied and rebuffed by women. And maybe there is some truth in that, but surely there must be plenty other men who’ve been bullied and rebuffed by women who’ve not plotted to commit and carry out mass murder (thankfully cut short). Why did he?

That’s a brilliant example. Because Hitler was, as we all know, completely sane.

By 1942, his body may have been literally and figuratively decomposing – and he might have contracted syphilis in 1908 that went untreated which could have caused severe brain damage later on in life – but other than that, completely and utterly normal. Never anything wrong, mentally or physically, with Hitler.

Just a question: when you say “disturbed”, what do you mean? What would cause someone to be “disturbed”, in your opinion?

“Sane” behaviour is defined, usually, by comforting to certain standards of society. Most people do not plot to kill people. Most people do not hold that demons infest the bodies of their loved ones and they have to be forcefully excised to relieve them. If this was the action of a perfectly normal, sane, person, then why haven’t we heard (or seen) more of this kind of thing? And I don’t mean, more in the past decade or so, I mean in everyday life. It should be a common occurence, but it isn’t. Same thing with serial killers, like Ted Bundy. You haven’t seen a lot of people like Ted Bundy, have you?

Do you think the person who chewed another person’s face off was in their right mind? Have you seen many other people chew other people’s faces off? I sure haven’t. Sure, that person might have been on some substance, but surely a substance that messed with their mind, or wouldn’t you agree? Isn’t that the textbook definition of “insane”, not being in their right mind?

@ Pitchguest 60Just a question: when you say “disturbed”, what do you mean? What would cause someone to be “disturbed”, in your opinion?

In this situation I think the word applies. But how it applies is the tricky part. When I see it in brain science it usually talks about specific patterns of cell growth or larger patterns of thought that we can’t competently use to predict what people do as casually as I see it being used in this case. That word overlaps with too many things in too many places to be used here without very specific evidence of a rational diagnosis, connected to specific evidence from the misogynistic trash that can be interpreted as having their logic altered by the changes that condition causes, anything speculating that this was caused by mental illness has a very high evidence list to hit.

The hatred of women is a fine thing to consider disturbing though. As well as any other social factors that might be found in his life and his words. It’s just at this point we start to get into individually chosen identities, proportions of people that share those identities, and how some of the more disturbing people might influence parts of this system. So people either get their guns or pull out dissecting trays or other things they use on items that they want to be careful with.

I would consider someone with a demonstrated lack of empathy disturbing. I would consider someone who seemed to think of other people as tools or objects, and did not seem to think of them as persons disturbing. I think that people that act like they should have something socially, emotionally, and physically complicated in a manner like it might be bought at a store disturbing. I would consider someone that never gave any evidence that they actually understood what people unlike them were like disturbing. But some of these behaviors are affected by the heat of emotions alone it’s not a word that can be carelessly used in a situation like this.

Thil is correct. Obtaining sex is not much easier for women than it is for men. Obtaining sex is easier for the top 5-10% of attractive women that most men seem to feel entitled to. The over 40s, the uglies, the fatties, the not-well-dressed-and-socially-awkward, suffer from exactly the same lack of attention that their male equivalents do. The difference is that those women are literally invisible to men, so men assume that this problem doesn’t apply to women.

I agree that looking for easy answers on this topic may not be productive. But if you think that this guy didn’t hate sexually successful men simply because he felt entitled to women’s bodies then you are living in fairyland.

So, do you think people who demonstrate lack of empathy, think of people as tools or objects and do not think of people as persons to be sane?

If you saw someone kill a dog, a puppy, just like that, would you think that person to be sane?

If they also twisted the neck and cut it open to see what the insides looked like, would that be sane?

Or would it just be “disturbing”?

I know things that are disturbing. To me. Seeing pus flow from a wound, that’s disturbing. To see an animal eat another animal alive, to see the other animal struggling while their innards are being consumed right in front of it, that’s disturbing. And listening to the logic of the person who planned and carried out two premeditated murders and a drive-by shooting, that’s disturbing, and the person himself is clearly, as you say, “disturbed” – but was he sane? In my opinion? Not in a million years.

(Oh, and he didn’t just hate women. He hated other men, too. To call this, as many feminist bloggers have already done, a “misogynist” crime, is a serious misnomer and gross mishandling of facts.)

#68, Sorry PG, I cannot agree. As previously stated, the only reason he hated sexually successful men is that he saw them getting access to women’s bodies in a way that he, the “perfect gentleman” was not able to achieve. Was he a generally hateful and disturbed person? Yes. Was his hatefulness focused on women and their sexual activities as a result of his personal issues? Yes.

I guess the point at which we disagree is not on the diagnosis of his mental state, which AFAIK neither of us are qualified to make, but on whether there exists a culture that supports and encourages the idea that rich white boys should be knee deep in all the pussy they can handle, and if they are not that they are somehow entitled to feel aggrieved. I think there is such a culture. I guess you do not?

#69, I agree. Possibly because men are unlikely to assess a hot woman for potential threat in the same way as women would a hot guy. But as a bi lady, all of this is fascinating to me, of course. (Not the murderous misogynist, I mean)

I think it would be more accurate to say that society encourages several different mindsets that when put together make killing women for not sleeping with you seem reasonable.

Firstly he thinks men like him should be able to get laid. Secondly he thinks that his inability to make that happen isn’t his fault because he’s part of an entitled generation. Thirdly he decides that it’s ok to go out an kill women because of the mindset that it’s ok to break the law if you personally think they’re unjust.

“So if lived in society where indiscriminate killing was acceptable it’d be sane behaviour, where as voices condemning him would be the ramblings of man men”

Well, okay, maybe conforming is too simplistic. And maybe society isn’t the best way to describe it. On top of societal standards, I also think that the human species has an ingrained empathy that prevent it from doing harm to other humans, or indeed to other animals. I don’t think we’d get very far if indiscriminate killing was the modus operandi of our ancestors.

Actually, forget what I said about society. It’s not relevant. Sanity has to do with a healthy mind. When your mind’s not healthy, you do things that are strange. Many sane people have killed people; for money, for status, for revenge. You name it. But when they kill people for the fun of it, for the joy of seeing someone’s blood splattered on the wall as they shoot their brains out, then you’re dealing with a severely, as you say, “disturbed” individual. Their mind’s not healthy. And yes, this diagnosis of insanity has partly to do with conforming to – or rather, adhering to – societal standards.

So unusual behaviour is a sign of insanity. I like having brown sauce on chips, I am insane?

Simply unusual behaviour doesn’t grant you the label of insane. It has to be much more than that.

#72, I’m not sure about the “entitled generation” bit, but other than that I agree (remember, this is the first generation who have grown up without a law condoning marital rape, I can’t see how that makes them MORE entitled than previous ones). It is certainly a combination of factors, and so far I agree with Ally that looking for easy answers is not helpful. I suppose it is the “He thought he was entitled to women’s bodies but that’s totes not sexism, GOD” crowd for which I have no patience.

“Feminists and their allies are already spinning this as the work of an MRA and a consequence of men’s rights ideology. MRAs, I do not doubt, will become defensive and probably find some way to blame feminism – some PUAs are already going down that route. I don’t think any of that is meaningful or helpful, and may provide a convenient moral escape route for some people who should really be looking to their own hearts and consciences.”

Feminists are almost entirely to blame for turning this tragedy into a political weapon. They only care about about silencing a counter-ideology that threatens their hegemony over gender-politics and not about the victims who were mostly male. Rodgers clearly wasn’t an MRA. The MRA mindset would have prevented these killings since Rodgers would no longer have based his self-worth on the approval of women. The MGTOW philosophy that you, in a bullying manner, call “strange” would have helped him 100X more than feminism. But that would have been unacceptable for feminists and their ilk: for his rage to have been quelled by genuine self-esteem and emotional independence and not guilt or self-critique.

You pretend to advocate humanistic analysis but your article is littered with micro-aggressions against MRAs and the manosphere, which are the two sources that are most needed right now.

@ Pitchguest 68So, do you think people who demonstrate lack of empathy, think of people as tools or objects and do not think of people as persons to be sane?

Only if they hurt people. Sanity is a socially defined phenomena. It’s a matter of bad signs that are rational to keep in mind. People still get to show you what they are for themselves, but the calculations do change with what we see bad and good.

If someone killed a puppy without good reason that would be disturbing. If someone cut open the brains of infant rats that would be disturbing unless one was studying behavioral neurobiology and psychology. Context is everything.

“…but was he sane? In my opinion? Not in a million years.”
Then you have a lot of very specific information that you should now be able to give me. Note that this should be information that one could easily find in Pubmed (or on the same level) and not only angry places on the internet. Hate is easy. Hate leading to killing is easy. Tying what he did to a named diagnosis when there is so much woman hatred available is harder for a good reason.

That he also killed men is significant, but I need to see an established pattern of treating men as if they have no personal autonomy, are things and not people, and owe him something on a similar level as sex. And even if you find it, his hatred of women is still a significant subject of discussion, as well as that other thing. And it’s even possible in principle to try to understand which might have motivated him more while not getting in the way of people that want to look at the other thing too. So since I’m not doing any of that I’m wondering why you felt the need to mention what you did?

Spree killers, as Michael Kimmel recently pointed out in Angry White Men, are invariably racked by aggrieved entitlement – they believe they have an inalienable right to status, to success and to sex.

What you really need to address, if you want to convince me, is where this astonishing sense of entitlement is coming from, if not a social discourse. There are a million things I would like but I haven’t developed the notion I’m entitled to them because society keeps telling me I’m not. It’s taught me repeatedly, since I was small that other people’s entitlements may trump mine. There are also things I think I am entitled to and I’ve developed those notions through social discourses that reinforced the idea that I was entitled.

I’m in no doubt at all that Rodger’s actions were reinforced by a social discourse, because the vast majority of what we do is. That includes the act of avenging one’s wounded feelings by committing a mass killing, which has been normalised in American culture and the various ideas expressed by Rodger. I’m afraid these ideas are going to be broadly and justifiably described as MRA in the same way that the Boston bomber’s views were broadly described as Islamicist and Breivik’s as white nationalist. There isn’t, as far as I know a membership card for being an MRA, but this guy believed men had a right to sex with women and was activist in pursuing it. In any case, if someone bombs you and leaves a note to say they did it in the name of Allah, you don’t say ‘he wasn’t really an Islamicist, he was thrown out of every mosque he tried to attend.’

#68, Sorry PG, I cannot agree. As previously stated, the only reason he hated sexually successful men is that he saw them getting access to women’s bodies in a way that he, the “perfect gentleman” was not able to achieve. Was he a generally hateful and disturbed person? Yes. Was his hatefulness focused on women and their sexual activities as a result of his personal issues? Yes.

In his manifesto, he mused on murdering all other men to get all women to himself. He was fiercely adamant that all other men were imbeciles and brutes and all deserve to die, even his own brother. He doesn’t mention his sister and mother in this respect, however, except for his step mother. He was a misanthrope, through and through. He hated everyone and were he to go on a killing spree, like the one in Norway, he would have done so with the intent of killing as many men and as many women as possible. To focus on only one part of this message to make the crime “misogynist” in nature is so incredibly self-centered, especially when he actually killed more men than women, starting with his two roommates.

I guess the point at which we disagree is not on the diagnosis of his mental state, which AFAIK neither of us are qualified to make, but on whether there exists a culture that supports and encourages the idea that rich white boys should be knee deep in all the pussy they can handle, and if they are not that they are somehow entitled to feel aggrieved. I think there is such a culture. I guess you do not?

Well, I live in Sweden, so no. I have a feeling that the US (or the UK, or wherever you live) don’t coddle “rich white boys” to feel entitled to free sex either, by any woman (or man) they so desire. But Rodger wasn’t a rich “white” boy, he was (of his admission) Eurasian. But he did have a sense of entitlement, and he was smug and seemingly without empathy for his fellow man (which might have been a gradual transition or could’ve always been there, dormant). I don’t mourn his passing. As to whether he was “encouraged” to feel entitled by society, that’s a hot potato. You generally don’t want to speculate on the reason why someone was “inspired” or “encouraged”, because then you end up on a slippery slope to find a scapegoat and before you know it, you’re on the O’Reilly Factor decrying videogames for causing violence.

avern, don’t know if a feminine perspective is worth anything to you (I’m going to go out on a limb and say no) but I am in full support of the MGTOW movement. If men really feel that shunning female company is what they need to be fulfilled then I wish them the best.

The problem stems from a) why they feel that way and b) the fact that most MGTOW seem to hang around in everyone else’s way, going on about how they don’t need women, they’re going to be GTOW, any day now, you’ll miss them when they’re gone, then you’ll be sorry, any day.. etc. etc.

#78, I absolutely agree that his dehumanisation of those around him extended to other men. You will not find me disagreeing with that at all. However, do you not feel that it is in any way significant that his hatred took the form of feeling that he was entitled to women’s bodies? Not at all?

I do think so, and I live in the UK, and I have been on the receiving end of the culture of middle-class white boys who the universe owes them sex, so yes, I do think that culture exists here. I have never been to Sweden (yet! someday!) so I cannot comment on cultural differences there.

I have mild autism which in my middle school meant I was entitled to go the special needs class room when ever I wanted to which I regularly took advantage of to get some solitude at lunch and break times. I’d often see the woman who ran the place helping kids with their home work in the part of the room where the desk and white bored was (as opposed to bit with the computer where I was). What in retrospect always bugged me is that when ever the kid was failing to get something (which was often) the teacher would never tell them it was their fault, she’d always give them the impression that is was just one of the manifest injustices of life that they didn’t understand what a “verb” is.

Maybe my school wasn’t particularly typical but I’ve always got the impression that the kind of mindset that treatment instils in kids is substantially the same as the mindset that makes people think that their own inability to achieve in life is somehow a product of a failing of the world instead of them. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote “entitled generation”

Yes, how dare these men write online about their thoughts and the details of their lives! Somewhere, somehow a woman might have a 12 second chunk of her web-browsing inconvenienced by such violent text!

Only if they hurt people. Sanity is a socially defined phenomena. It’s a matter of bad signs that are rational to keep in mind. People still get to show you what they are for themselves, but the calculations do change with what we see bad and good.

If someone killed a puppy without good reason that would be disturbing. If someone cut open the brains of infant rats that would be disturbing unless one was studying behavioral neurobiology and psychology. Context is everything.

Heh. I can’t help but notice that you are evading the most important part of the question. Context may be everything, but we’re not talking about cutting up people or animals who are dead, we’re talking about living, breathing beings. We’re talking about another living, breathing being, purposely killing another living, breathing being, and then cutting them up to see what their insides look like. That sort of thing. Do you honestly, genuinely, believe that anyone who does have a perfectly healthy mind?

Then you have a lot of very specific information that you should now be able to give me. Note that this should be information that one could easily find in Pubmed (or on the same level) and not only angry places on the internet. Hate is easy. Hate leading to killing is easy. Tying what he did to a named diagnosis when there is so much woman hatred available is harder for a good reason.

To conclude that he wasn’t in his right mind, judging from the actions he commited in conjunction with his manifesto and the YouTube video he posted, has to be justified with proof? You don’t think you’ve been spending too much time with Nerd? I mean, you’re not seriously expecting citations for that, do you? I didn’t give him a diagnosis. I didn’t prescribe medicine. I just think he wasn’t sane, and that much is evident given the circumstances.

However it appears to me that you would rather blame it on women hatred rather than waiting for an exact prognosis, although I don’t think that would have much relevance anyway.

That he also killed men is significant, but I need to see an established pattern of treating men as if they have no personal autonomy, are things and not people, and owe him something on a similar level as sex. And even if you find it, his hatred of women is still a significant subject of discussion, as well as that other thing. And it’s even possible in principle to try to understand which might have motivated him more while not getting in the way of people that want to look at the other thing too. So since I’m not doing any of that I’m wondering why you felt the need to mention what you did?

He mustn’t have thought much of other men as well, considering he killed both of his roommates without a second thought.

And I merely mentioned it because you named hatred of women as an example of being “disturbed”, the only specific example you provided. But perhaps I jumped the gun.

By the way, in wars? Killing other people is expected. Killing other people is normal. That’s usually been the climate in every war fought so far up to this point. Then the same standards of sanity does not apply, because war by its very existence defies sanity. You have to cast your sanity aside or you will, most likely, go insane. And a lot of people – soldiers – who return from war haven’t exactly returned with a healthy mind. However, I still think, even in wars – where killing other people is (regretably) an exception to the rule – killing people and cutting them up to see what they look like inside is still not sane. Less so than the war.

I cannot believe the ridiculously gynocentric approach some people (external to this thread) are taking to this horrible crime. That he was a misogynist is an inescapable and relevant fact, but I’m seeing folks referring to it as a ‘hate crime against women’ and Ally is getting attacked on twitter for how dangerous this article is to women… He killed twice as many women as men!! How are people missing this?

I mean, even if you decided that misogyny was the sole relevant factor in his attacks, that still leaves you with a situation where you should be noticing that men have somehow become the primary victims of misogyny.

I don’t think that things should be shifted so that the focus becomes all about the men who have died, but the current erasure is baffling.

And that was entirely and only because the women at the sorority house he despised – because of all the thin, blonde, hot chicks living there who hadn’t volunteered to have sex with him – didn’t open the door he was pounding on for more than a minute. Can you imagine how many people would have been killed if he’d got inside with 3 guns and several clips of ammo? And they would all have been women.

As it is, he spotted three women across the road, killed two, wounded one, then went on his way to kill and injure more people.

#77

I’m afraid these ideas are going to be broadly and justifiably described as MRA in the same way that the Boston bomber’s views were broadly described as Islamicist and Breivik’s as white nationalist.

Well, anyone who throws around terms like “alpha male” and “perfect gentleman” lifted straight out of PUA/MRA lingo is going out of their way to ensure that. Just as people who write or video rants about Jews/ Muslims/blacks will be regarded as attacking/killing people because they’re racist. Or those who physically attack homosexuals after writing/ranting violent intentions and fantasies about them will be described as driven to do that by their homophobia.

Violence based on misogyny, racism, homophobia is not at all unusual. The unusual aspect of this is that it’s a spree killing. Looking at this man’s videos and manifesto, he seems to be an almost perfect match for the “pseudocommando” designation among mass murderers. Check out these extracts.

The pseudocommando is a type of mass murderer who kills in public during the daytime, plans his offense well in advance, and comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons. He has no escape planned and expects to be killed during the incident. Research suggests that the pseudocommando is driven by strong feelings of anger and resentment, flowing from beliefs about being persecuted or grossly mistreated. He views himself as carrying out a highly personal agenda of payback. Some mass murderers take special steps to send a final communication to the public or news media; …

… In his case studies of five pseudocommando-type mass murderers who were apprehended alive, Mullen described several traits and historical factors that these individuals had in common. In particular, they were bullied or isolated as children, turning into loners who felt despair over being socially excluded. They were generally suspicious, resentful grudge holders who demonstrated obsessional or rigid traits. Narcissistic, grandiose traits were also present, along with heavy use of externalization. They held a worldview of others being generally rejecting and uncaring. As a result, they spent a great deal of time feeling resentful and ruminating over past humiliations. Such ruminations invariably evolved into fantasies about violent revenge. …

Gynocentric would be an apt description. There is a definite narrative being applied here, and I have been disgusted by feminists who have tried to use the deaths of multiple people to score some political points against MRAs in the most fallacious of ways. If someone had described the killer as hating PUAs and promiscuous men, I would have guessed political views closer to feminism. If they had further described the killer as entertaining fantasies of murdering all men and hating promiscuous heterosexual women, I would have guessed political views in line with radical feminism. Feminists should be careful with rocks in their glass houses.

What is happening is a rehash of male disposability. Just as in the boko haram case, violence specifically targeted at males is not considered gendered – even when it is the definition of gendered. If it is juxtaposed in relation to some violence against women, males are erased all together, even when they are the victims of more severe or larger scale violence.

In the rodgers case, since it is perceived that he harbored hatred in a way that could be viewed as pertaining to women as a group, it is viewed as misogyny even when he hated males for the same selfish sexual reasons – and even when the death toll has more males on the list.

“And that was entirely and only because the women at the sorority house he despised – because of all the thin, blonde, hot chicks living there who hadn’t volunteered to have sex with him – didn’t open the door he was pounding on for more than a minute.”

Yes, and that scenario is horrifying. However, it remains just a scenario. Meanwhile you’ve got the reality of three men, his housemates, repeatedly stabbed for being more sexually successful him, two women gunned down for being women, and one man shot for existing (and possibly therefore presumed more sexually successful)

I do not find ignoring what was in order to focus on what could have been to be appropriate.

Btw, thanks for the linked paper, it looks very interesting, and, at a brief inspection, seems to uphold Ally’s position regarding the contribution bullying. I wonder however if there isn’t likely to be a foundational difference between those spree killers who choose suicide and those who choose capture.

@Thil “it really irritates me in instances like this when people perceive an attempt to explain as an attempt to remove blame. “and he’s a total shit besides” should be taken read”

Fair, but I remember after previous shootings (mostly in the decade or so after Columbine) where empathy for the shooters in some quarters reached the point of practically romanticising what they had done, and treating them as co-victims.

I do believe that empathy and explanation are key to finding preventative measures, but I can’t hold it too much against those people who still feel the need to push back against that excess, even when the push back may be misguided.

I try to make my “he’s a total shit” explicit rather than implicit to avoid being derailed by that reaction. It is not much effort and is historically justified, so why not?

Of all the MRA’s I’ve seen, none of them are even remotely like this guy, and especially not MGTOW’s who wouldn’t hate women this much (if anything they might fear women and have trust issues due to bad experiences). If this guy had access to more MRA or feminist material, he may not have had so much hate but then again he probably has a screw loose somewhere making it difficult for him to truly respect other humans. I’ve known angry n hateful people, they’ll give you a verbal lashing maybe but never ever goto this extreme, nor do they want to.

@Pitchguest 86
>Heh. I can’t help but notice that you are evading the most important part of the question. Context may be everything, but we’re not talking about cutting up people or animals who are dead, we’re talking about living, breathing beings. We’re talking about another living, breathing being, purposely killing another living, breathing being, and then cutting them up to see what their insides look like. That sort of thing. Do you honestly, genuinely, believe that anyone who does have a perfectly healthy mind?

Oh no. You don’t get to play that game. You are the one making an argument here in favor of mental illness. I don’t need to talk about it, because I have seen no reason to suspect mental illness yet. If you believe that there is a reason to to suspect mental illness, that is your argument to make and I am willing to listen. But just remember we got here because I wanted to talk about the obvious, and you are trying to shove in something that you are unwilling to describer.

I get to be interested in the misogyny angle and not give a crap about what you feel about it. And I get to not give a crap about claims of mental illness without diagnostic information.The misogyny in the killers words, the literal woman hatred, is obvious to the point of being a totally valid subject (I don’t need to but I’ll give my stuff below). Because the killer himself said he was going to kill women and he went on at length in the most nauseating, possessive, self-entitled language possible. He described specifically the people he wanted to kill and then later said he was just going to go hog wild, I get to say that his women hatred, his misogyny, was a reason for what he did.

You want to actually apply the label of something that requires an official diagnosis. Mental illness. Some predispose towards violence and some don’t. Unless you believe that all mentally ill people are violence risks you have evidence for this one. Argue your position. You seemed fine with my general characterization about regular folks and Hitler earlier. Now suddenly When I am staying in the category of regular folks you have problems.

>To conclude that he wasn’t in his right mind, judging from the actions he commited in conjunction with his manifesto and the YouTube video he posted, has to be justified with proof? You don’t think you’ve been spending too much time with Nerd? I mean, you’re not seriously expecting citations for that, do you? I didn’t give him a diagnosis. I didn’t prescribe medicine. I just think he wasn’t sane, and that much is evident given the circumstances.
>However it appears to me that you would rather blame it on women hatred rather than waiting for an exact prognosis, although I don’t think that would have much relevance anyway.

This is amazing. I ask you for something reasonable, the evidence for applying mental illness to another human that did something terrible (remember, you seemed to like what I said earlier about people in general and Hitler), and you respond with “dude, you want to talk science, ewwwww!”. If mental illness is in evidence you can cite specific parts of what he said that indicate you have a working knowledge of how the mental illness you suspect exists may have contributed to his behavior.

Meanwhile the literal woman hatred that this person had is so obvious I don’t really have to mention it, and I get to exclusively pay attention to it until something with an argument arrives. But just for completeness here is a bit of quote below, and then I’m actually not going to talk about this with you after this post because I don’t think that you are going to actually talk about any evidence for mental illness being involved, aka back up your assertions. You just want to dictate the subject of the conversation and keep it off of misogyny, women hatred. The thing that is the most obvious element to why he did what he did. I can’t see anything but emotional reactions so far but if you start getting specific about your diagnosis I might respond if it looks like you are going to take the idea of evidence based medicine seriously.

You forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer. I waited a long time for this. I’ll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you. All you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men.Before the mass murder he allegedly committed, 22-year-old Rodger – also said to have been killed Friday night – made several YouTube videos complaining that he was a virgin and that beautiful women wouldn’t pay attention to him. In one, he calmly outlined how he would “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see”.
Literal misogyny. Murderous hate directed at women so intense he was literally indiscriminate.

>He mustn’t have thought much of other men as well, considering he killed both of his roommates without a second thought.
And I never said that was not worth pursuing. You however have been very determined to worm your way out of your obligation to provide evidence for mental illness. After all if you have a reason to suspect it I’m allowed to specifically know what those things are. With some actual quoting and justifications for such a label.

I can meet my definitional requirements. You need to meet yours.

>And I merely mentioned it because you named hatred of women as an example of being “disturbed”, the only specific example you provided. But perhaps I jumped the gun.
If you don’t find hatred of women disturbing, have I got some bad news for you…

Kudos for not falling into the trap of calling him an MRA. Too many people see only The Enemy and can’t differentiate between an MRA, a PUA, and an MGTOW etc. (These are the same people who will say things like “not all feminists are like that” to disavow radical feminists etc.) The posts at Jezebel etc. are lazy political spin.

““Feminists and their allies are already spinning this as the work of an MRA and a consequence of men’s rights ideology. MRAs, I do not doubt, will become defensive and probably find some way to blame feminism – some PUAs are already going down that route. I don’t think any of that is meaningful or helpful, and may provide a convenient moral escape route for some people who should really be looking to their own hearts and consciences.”

Really good call here, though this is already long since spun into the all-American blame game, and people tastelessly using this tragedy to advance their own political agendas and petty grievances. I’d include much of the #yesallwomen hashtag in that, BTW. Not to point the finger exclusively at feminists – Fox News managed to chime in with a “blame the gay” angle as well:

Hopefully over the longer term, there might be some discussion of the issues raised by this tragedy that are insightful and, more importantly, actually helpful.

Also, thanks for updating me on “Incel”. After seeing Rodger’s videos and reading about PUAHate, I pegged him as a “TFLer” rather than an MRA or PUA, but I hadn’t heard much about “True Forced Loneliness” in a few years. I see that it’s morphed into a different title.

By the scope of this post and many of the comments, many men think its way harder for men to have sex than women. Yet women wanting sex is considered to be wrong or bad, if a woman were to hire a man fore sex? It would considered to be very abd. Women in fact have it way harder than men. If we are not “hot”enough,don’t have the right body, not considered attractive enough then we not only don’t get sex we get endless stuff about losing weight, about how we are ugly, how we are not worth having a root, so on and so on. Men seem to think they are the only ones who get rejected or friendzoned. If women don’t have the perfect body then men will criticise us for being fat, short, ugly, not dressing how they would like. Yet we we do look more what they think is better; then we are often called sluts hussies, accused or being a tease, just looking for attention, or asking for it. Women get bullied just as much as men when we are young and our bullies are both boys and girls. We also know what its like to no fit in, to feel undeserving and so on. I by the way lost my virginity at 24 and on one side I got rubbing for that and very cruel teasing and on the other how good and pure that made me. And women asking for sex? Just what does that make her?

Honestly this entire post makes me sick, bullying is certainly a problem, BUtT boys and girls get it equally, and I can tell you that sex is harder for a woman to get than a man. After all men can access prostitutes, sex clubs, so on and so on, but women have very limited opportunity for that. If a woman cant have sex then its often too bad.

The fact that most on here think that poor men, who in fact run the world and frequently do have a say and control over women’s body try and say that for a woman to say no or not provide instant access is somehow the woman’s fault is so sad its disturbing. Its this that does not help.

If a woman control sex, then so does a man, I mean men can say no right? So why is it only called women controlling it? Its total bullshit. I am so sick of a few men trying to make excuses or complain how they are hardly done by and making it out like its our fault.

I hesitate to give you the attention you so obviously crave, but will in order to challenge your stunted worldview.

First of all, an apology. You aren’t a troll, you do appear to believe every word that you write. You previously supported Gingko’s cretinous statement that every straight woman “trade on sexual access” in every dealing with a man.

“Feminists are almost entirely to blame for turning this tragedy into a political weapon. They only care about about silencing a counter-ideology that threatens their hegemony over gender-politics and not about the victims who were mostly male.”

Despite the deluded rumblings of your intellectual mentors, “feminists” don’t control the media. The mainstream media, un-influenced by feminism, sized upon the misogysnistc videos *left by the murderer himself* in which he explains, using language that could be lifted out of any MRA, mgtow or pua blog, that when would be made to pay for “rejecting him”. Because you’re a manosphere devotee, you are unable to imagine a world without an all powerful feminist oppressive overlord.

“Rodgers clearly wasn’t an MRA. The MRA mindset would have prevented these killings since Rodgers would no longer have based his self-worth on the approval of women. The MGTOW philosophy that you, in a bullying manner, call “strange” would have helped him 100X more than feminism. But that would have been unacceptable for feminists and their ilk: for his rage to have been quelled by genuine self-esteem and emotional independence and not guilt or self-critique.”

The cornerstone of MRA, mgtow and pua theory is “other-ing” women, viewing them as “gatekeepers” to sex, cruel deniers of men, money/children grabbers who exploit feminist laws, powerful beings lording it over oppressed men, protected by the imaginary and all powerful feminists, who are dedicated to their war on men. Any MRA blog, mgtow blog or pua blog will contain articles and comments promoting this deluded and toxic worldview. You will be unable to refute any of this paragraph, and you trot out the wearisome refain that MRAs would have “taught” this murderer not to value himself based on approval of women. You, as you must when you subscribe to your ideology, simply don’t understand the machinations of dehumanisation. Promoting stereotypes is promoting prejudice. Treating an entire class of humans as a monolith is prejudice. A man open about his hatred of women, with murder in mind and a persecution complex spending time on MRA blogs, reading the violent imagery and psycho-sexual fantasies about retribution (available on any “mainstream” MRA blog) would, I posit, not be dissuaded by what he read or the people he would have encountered. He would simply have found another collection of people with dark resentments against women and society.

“You pretend to advocate humanistic analysis but your article is littered with micro-aggressions against MRAs and the manosphere, which are the two sources that are most needed right now.”

MRAs and the manosphere have nothing positive to offer anyone. The collections of blogs that constitute this fake movement is nothing more than a straightforward and self-serving drama triangle: oppressed MRAs who see the truth and bravely stand up to an oppressive monolith intent on their destruction. It is fantasy: nothing more, nothing less. The manosphere has achieved nothing except introducing inadequates to each other and providing a few laughs to some observers and, of course, galvanising and consolidating those feminists who have actually noticed MRA blogs. They now have as much misogyny as they need to justify their continuing existence.

Do I think Rodger was driven to do this by the manosphere alone? No. But if you actually beleive he could have been dissuaded by the manosphere, you are quite simply, very stupid and/or pathetically delusional.

@Mel Eder 106
Sure, both sexes can say no. Bur the control goes to the side whose yes is most difficult to get, or who is least interested in something happening. If I want sex once a week and my spouse wants it four times a year, odds are that sex will happen mostly when she wants it and as often as she wants it, and what I want will not make much difference. Switch the sexes, and control would still be with the person who wanted less sex, which would now be the man.

How different things are, on the average, between men and women is harder to determine. “Women controlling access” seems fairly obvious with my life experience, but clearly you (and others) have different experiences. Neither of us can really generalize. I could list some circumstantial evidence, but it would take proper scientific data to have the faintest chance of convincing either of us, and I, for one, have nothing of the kind to offer.

@Avern 104
“a tragedy that has its deeper roots in misandry”
Come on! Try to stay on this planet. It is wrong to use this crazy bastard as a stick to beat all MRAs with. But admit at least that he did hate and resent women, and that his main motivation seems to stem from not getting laid. What has that got to do with misandry?

Meanwhile you’ve got the reality of three men, his housemates, repeatedly stabbed for being more sexually successful him, two women gunned down for being women, and one man shot for existing (and possibly therefore presumed more sexually successful)

Those three housemates were not just sexually successful, they were also asian. I’ve not read much of that manifesto nor listened to more than a few minutes of his videos, but he was as much a racist as he was a misogynist.

his main motivation seems to stem from not getting laid.

More than that. He never, ever, not once approached a woman – not even one of those hot, blonde, thin types that he thought were his “due”. Seeing as he had, on at least one occasion, thrown his latte at a table of women – who had all stayed sitting with their friends rather than approach a stranger on the street to ask for sex – I’m inclined to the view that many people would have spread the word to stay away from that bloke.

And the reason he was attracted to that puahate site he frequented was that he refused to follow any of the perfectly routine, agony aunt style recommendations of the less-hateful PUA books/sites/advocates, like learning how to talk to women and joining clubs or activities where you’re likely to meet women. He preferred to drive a European car and walk around in his designer outfits and thought that this should earn him the spontaneous sexual enthusiasm of women – but only the “hot” ones.

Yes I agree, Im also tired about hearing the babble about women being the “keepers of sex” sex goes both way and you need at least two consensual people to performing it. The idea that only men want sex is a old fashion victorian superstition that has no basis in reality. And I also know women have a hard time in getting sex, yes she may be able to find lots of volunteers for a quicky but at risk to ruin her reputation. She has a lot more to lose (socially speaking) then a man has…

About men ruling or running the world, It may be true to a certain extent but to the common everyday man, is utterly useless. Just look at the shooter, he is a man therefor he runs the world, he should have been able to get what he wanted….but no. The running the world meme is a platonic fable that have little or no advantage for the 99% of men who are subjected to the decision of who’s above, and today age (still rare but not so much) the person above you may even be a woman….

Meanwhile you’ve got the reality of three men, his housemates, repeatedly stabbed for being more sexually successful him, two women gunned down for being women, and one man shot for existing (and possibly therefore presumed more sexually successful)

The one man shot in the deli? He was unluckier than the others who were shot there. I don’t know how many people were also shot and wounded in that shop, but the security video from inside the shop shows that he shot at several people. There was at least one woman he aimed at and missed just above her head because she was already on-the-move/diving-for-the-floor. She was one of the lucky ones.

He is quite explicit about hating and wanting to kill men for being sexually successful where he is not. That to me is misandry. At the same time I agree with you that it is ridiculous to say that misandry is the deepest cause of the attack. While I have not (and will not) look into his writings and videos in great depth, it appears clear that misogyny sat closest to heart.

I am reminded of Ozy’s law; that every misogynistic action or belief produces a misandristic outcome/belief as well (and vice versa). That his overwhelming misogyny is accompanied by great hatred (and harm) of men should surprise no one.

@Sans-sanity: Damn, that’s Ozy’s law? Does ozy have a blog post anywhere describing that? I’d come up with a “law” like that just recently, but it seems like she formulated it a long time ago. Ah, well…great minds think alike, I suppose XD

yes I was also thinking of Ozy’s law. misoginy and misandry are the two faces of the same coin, the coin is a distorted view of human beings who dont conform to your set of values. I never met or hear a man/woman who shares miso belief who wasnt also misandric and vice versa.

@MildlyMagnificent “they were also asian.” Wait, was he not Asian?
Eh, I suppose it’s no less baffling than his killing other men for being men. (Or killing anyone for being anything for that matter).

Otherwise, yes, I know he shot many people and that it was a factor of luck not gender whether or not you survived. My point is that it is profoundly misguided and harmful to focus on this soley as an act of hatred and malevolence against women.

I mean, he says he hates and wants to kill men. He goes out and kills men. He kills women too, and probably would have liked to kill a lot more. This doesn’t justify minimising and ignoring four body bags out of six, which is what is happening when people talk about this soley in terms of harm to (and hatred of) women.

I generally agree with you, however, their allegience to an ideology based on supremacy, hatred and bitterness, and subsequent scapegoating, gave them a/ a rationale b/ some support c/ a framework. And many of them believe they will be rememberd fondly for their actions.

The toxic mix of violent tendancies nurtured in a dark ideology is what we are talking about. I think my analogy stands, but you definitely have a point.

@Gunlord Heh-heh, she pipped me to the post as well. I think that possibly it may be one of those slightly obvious things that needs someone to put a name to before any one realises that they’ve been thinking along the same lines.
The full post is here http://goodmenproject.com/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz/ozys-law/
The date is likely misleading as that is a reblog.

@Carnation, Ayup, but those white supremacists haven’t generally been going around talking about how much they hate and want to kill other whites. This guy is explicit about wanting to kill men for virtue of being other men.

We (other men) were nothing but obstacles and insults to him, and that is why we all deserved to die. This doesn’t detract from the fact that he saw women as nothing but his unjustly denied entitlement (and therefore also, likely primarily, deserved to die).

Well actually, they are quite big on killing whites who don’t adhere to their fantasy world and call them “race traitors”. Racism underpins their actions. Interestingly, liberal whites are also targets (in common with your average manosphere goon).

Also, there’s the rather obvious point that he classed all women, including his mother, as evil, wherewas he was openly jealous at men who *hadn’t* been rejected as he had. Underpinning his entire manifesto and his video was his hatred for women and what he perceived as what they had done to him.

It seems petty to argue this point – he was a murderer driven by misogny and bitterness. Ted Bundy, for example, generally targeted middle-class female students, and bitterness about social class undoubtedly underpinned his actions, but hatred of women was a primary driver.

It seems that this fellow did hate women (if not exclusively) and that this was a main part of his motivation. That still does not justify using him as an excuse to banish MRA ideology, or even bitterness against women.

For comparison, the Bader-Meinhof gang of the seventies maimed and killed people for reasons of socialist ideology. It does not follow that socialism is a ideology of violence that should be banished – even if some right-wingers have tried to argue exactly that.

On the other hand, the European left of those times had to tone down considerably some perfectly legitimate opinions about sticking it to the class enemy, the understandable violence of the oppressed etc. If there are violent people that share some of your views, certain statements, however sincerely meant, become an excuse for violence. For the same reason, people may have every right to be angry about women and their role in society, but lest they want to encourage future murderers they should still tone down their spiels a bit – or at least keep it to alt.sex.stories, where it is clear that we are just letting off steam.

Ahh, Carnation with misinformation again. Because you are sloppy, I suppose. Or maybe dishonest. You don’t have the best ‘reputation’ on here, that’s for sure. It wasn’t his mother he hated (why don’t you read his manifesto? Its practically a biography). It was his STEPMOTHER. His real mother gave him everything he wanted. His stepmother disciplined him. Also, if you weren’t such a dishonest goof you’d do enough research to notice that he felt so many people and things were ‘beneath him’ that he seems more like a narcissistic misanthrope than anything else. I know nuance is beyond you. And so the only time I’m going to reply to you in this thread is when you lie or mis-state the facts as you do now. Once again: he loved his mother, hated his step-mother. Put that in your man-hating pipe and smoke it.

“It seems that this fellow did hate women (if not exclusively) and that this was a main part of his motivation. That still does not justify using him as an excuse to banish MRA ideology, or even bitterness against women.”

Rodger shouldn’t be used exclusively as an excuse to banish ideology against MRA theory, no. But then again, the cornerstone of MRA theory is bitterness against women and/or (often conflated with) feminism, so it should be held in contempt (not sure banish is the correct term?) because of its stereotyping of an entire class of human beings.

Any ideology that stereotypes an entire class of huma beings should be held in contempt.

Re Baader-Meinhoff (Rott Army Faktion, to give them their vainglorious title), the RAF were driven, at least as much, by hatred of Nazis and the West German state that allowed them to flourish (their argument) in the capitalist Imperial west.

Every study I’ve ever seen that dealt with sexual desire on a group level shows that women have less of it than men. This is of course on a GROUP level. Individual women vary all the way from asexuals to nymphos. But they are not evenly distributed. Add to this the fact that as a group (and I doubt anyone here will dispute this) men do most of the initiating in terms of sex and relationships and that is the reason that sex is considered a women’s resource.

It isn’t an ‘equal market’ in terms of the desires of the ‘buyers’ and the ‘sellers’.

“… that is the reason that sex is considered a women’s resource. It isn’t an ‘equal market’ in terms of the desires of the ‘buyers’ and the ‘sellers’.”

Your commodification of human sexuality is simplistic to the point of childishness. You can dress it up with pseudo-academic discourse, what you are saying makes you appear like an immature fool, stuck in adolescence.

“Women in fact have it way harder than men. ”
I doubt it. Not that it should be a pissing contest but of the men and women I’ve known with “ugly” bodies n what not, the women were far more likely to still have a partner or be able to find sex. I would guess both sides have somewhat similar difficulty in finding partners, but in my experience casual sex is harder or maybe just rarer for men to get, whilst non-casual sex based relationships are probably harder for women to get.

” I can tell you that sex is harder for a woman to get than a man.”
I would say nearly all women can get casual sex easier than equivalent attractiveness men if they want it, but there are issues like worrying about safety, slut-shaming, and of course being attracted. In all my experience I’ve seen far more men interested in casual sex than women. The flipside is it may be easier for men to get a relationship?

“So why is it only called women controlling it?”
I believe he is probably referring to the gatekeeper view of sexuality, where men are hornier, and want sex more but have to be approved and accepted first, where the women are much more pickier about who they have sex with. If it is true then feminism + women’s ability to earn her own way + birth control would lower the requirements for this access to sex for men so feminism would be a good thing, whereas before a woman had to choose a decent provider and the risk of pregnancy from sex was much much higher.

“Any ideology that stereotypes an entire class of huma beings should be held in contempt.”
Isn’t that what feminism does though? Privilege theory does that for sure.

“But then again, the cornerstone of MRA theory is bitterness against women and/or (often conflated with) feminism,”
I disagree on bitterness towards women, the bitterness towards feminism however does sound likely. Of all the MRA’s I’ve seen, the bitter ones tend to be bitter towards certain types of women in general (usually feminists). But we may see different MRA’s.

“MRAs and the manosphere have nothing positive to offer anyone.”

MRAs have done a huge amount of positive service in highlighting the difficulties of equality and social issues facing men. I’ve seen far more awareness raised by them than I have of even the feminists (not all feminists if that isn’t clear) whom say they advocate for men.

“Treating an entire class of humans as a monolith is prejudice. ”
Most feminists and MRA’s then I’ve seen are prejudiced, and you are treating the MRM as a monolith, are you prejudiced?

Who do we turn to for male issues if not the MRM? Who is looking out for men? There is a gaping chasm of silence around many social issues affecting men, who is going to speak about it and gain the traction needed for change?

“Despite the deluded rumblings of your intellectual mentors, “feminists” don’t control the media. ”
There are quite a few sites run by some feminists, or appear to be (is huffypost feminist?, DailyKos?) that paint this person as an MRA with no actual proof. Unless he states “I am an MRA” we can’t really label him as an MRA. I frequent both feminist and MRA sites, I am neither though. The amount of feminists I’ve seen so far trying to paint him as an MRA and trying to discredit the movement has been utterly ridiculous. Funnily enough some will try make out like /theredpill is MRA even, when that subreddit hates /mensrights from what I’ve seen and doesn’t identify as MRA. Hell you are conflating MRA’s, MGTOW’s and PUA’s even though they are completely different entities. Sure some might have similar views but I’ve seen oodles of feminists n MRA’s share the same views too, does that make feminists MRAs too? Does it make atheists christians if they believe in helping others?

It’s kinda sad how quick some will assume a misogynist to be an MRA straight away.

We could get into the levels of misogny prevelant on MRA blogs. It’s a bit of a waste of time and ends up in semantic circles. AVfM reeks of misogny and it’s the most popular MRA blog and the one generally considered to be “mainstream.” It’s been dealt with.

“MRAs have done a huge amount of positive service in highlighting the difficulties of equality and social issues facing men.”

Again, this has been dealt with elsewhere. MRAs have no “real life” presence. It is a collection of blogs.

“Hell you are conflating MRA’s, MGTOW’s and PUA’s even though they are completely different entities”

What do they have in common? Stereotyping of, and bitterness towards, women/feminists (they usually don’t understand or choose to understand the difference). IMO MGTOW don’t exist off of the ‘net, and neither (in any significant numbers) do PUAs. You can conflate them because they are united in their stereotyping.

Anyway, I’m bowing out of this discussion, will continue to read with interest though.

What do they have in common? Stereotyping of, and bitterness towards, women/feminists (they usually don’t understand or choose to understand the difference). IMO MGTOW don’t exist off of the ‘net, and neither (in any significant numbers) do PUAs. You can conflate them because they are united in their stereotyping.

This is untrue. The views about women are quit varied in both the mrm and the pua commuity.

“Any ideology that stereotypes an entire class of huma beings should be held in contempt.”

Isn’t that what feminism does though? Privilege theory does that for sure.

Privilege theory does that? How?

It’s simply a way for sociologists to analyse some of the specific and various elements contributing to the commonly accepted notion that we’re not born equal and that life isn’t an even playing field. People who clearly have ‘privilege’ in some circumstances lack privilege in other environments depending on the particular colour, class, age, gender, ability, disability, sexual preference, marital status differences within and outside the social interactions in question. It might be tedious to plough through the sometimes long-winded and jargon loaded academic materials on the subject, but the bare concept is hardly brain surgery.

Oh no. You don’t get to play that game. You are the one making an argument here in favor of mental illness. I don’t need to talk about it, because I have seen no reason to suspect mental illness yet. If you believe that there is a reason to to suspect mental illness, that is your argument to make and I am willing to listen. But just remember we got here because I wanted to talk about the obvious, and you are trying to shove in something that you are unwilling to describer.

“The obvious”? Which is what, exactly? And just what am I unwilling to describe? I’m arguing that he might not have been in his right mind. That could’ve been drug-induced or perhaps something snapped, but you generally don’t see “sane” people speak about people in the fashion he did, and then carry out the murders he’d planned.

I get to be interested in the misogyny angle and not give a crap about what you feel about it. And I get to not give a crap about claims of mental illness without diagnostic information.The misogyny in the killers words, the literal woman hatred, is obvious to the point of being a totally valid subject (I don’t need to but I’ll give my stuff below). Because the killer himself said he was going to kill women and he went on at length in the most nauseating, possessive, self-entitled language possible. He described specifically the people he wanted to kill and then later said he was just going to go hog wild, I get to say that his women hatred, his misogyny, was a reason for what he did.

You get to be interested and ignore everything else, apparently. Because in his manifesto he fantasises about exterminating every other man as vermin. Indeed, he hated women. And men. He hated everyone. He was a complete misanthrope. But that doesn’t enter into your narrative about a misogynist who just wanted to kill women, now does it?

It’s the same old canard that other feminists, feminist bloggers, have put out in the wake of the tragedy, make it all about misogyny. He made a YouTube video where he details he was going to kill all the “blonde sluts” he saw, but he also wrote a manifesto where he details killing every other man he could find. For some reason this is being ignored, deliberately or subconsciously, and if you look for the story that’s what you’ll find. Even though he killed and injured more men than women, it still is characterised as a misogynist killing. And people forget that his two first victims were men. Even now you have sensationalistic bloggers on this very website milking the misogyny angle for all it’s worth. It’s pathetic.

You want to actually apply the label of something that requires an official diagnosis. Mental illness. Some predispose towards violence and some don’t. Unless you believe that all mentally ill people are violence risks you have evidence for this one. Argue your position. You seemed fine with my general characterization about regular folks and Hitler earlier. Now suddenly When I am staying in the category of regular folks you have problems.

Even if Nerd insists there ought to be, not everything requires a citation. It’s perfectly in line to argue that Rodger was not of a healthy mind when you look at, for example, his YouTube video. Of course I don’t believe all mentally ill people are violence risks, because not all mentally ill people have the same mental illness and not all mentally ill people are the same. But that is not relevant to Rodger. I’ve asked you if you think he was in his right mind and you’ve evaded the question, time and time again.

And your characterization about regular folks and Hitler? I was being sarcastic, if you couldn’t tell. I’ll be sure to signal that next time. Hitler may have contracted syphilis at 19, and as we all know syphilis does devastating things to your mind. If untreated, later in life he might have had ideas of – oh, I don’t know – that Jews were the spawn of Satan and ought to be purified by fire? Surely the machinations of a sane and healthy mind.

This is amazing. I ask you for something reasonable, the evidence for applying mental illness to another human that did something terrible (remember, you seemed to like what I said earlier about people in general and Hitler), and you respond with “dude, you want to talk science, ewwwww!”.

Actually, that isn’t what I said because that would be stupid. But then again, you’re part of a clique that have become experts putting words in other people’s mouths.

Meanwhile the literal woman hatred that this person had is so obvious I don’t really have to mention it, and I get to exclusively pay attention to it until something with an argument arrives.

That is ALL you pay attention to, Brony. Nuance doesn’t exist in your world.

But just for completeness here is a bit of quote below, and then I’m actually not going to talk about this with you after this post because I don’t think that you are going to actually talk about any evidence for mental illness being involved, aka back up your assertions. You just want to dictate the subject of the conversation and keep it off of misogyny, women hatred. The thing that is the most obvious element to why he did what he did. I can’t see anything but emotional reactions so far but if you start getting specific about your diagnosis I might respond if it looks like you are going to take the idea of evidence based medicine seriously.

I’ve seen emotional reactions – from various feminist bloggers, like Jessica Valenti and glisswatch – that jump to conclusions and make it about themselves. Mostly they want to make it all about women and misogyny. They want to use the tragedy to score some rhetorical points. As for dictating the conversation, I have done no such thing, nor have I tried to steer it away from misogyny. I’m just saying he wasn’t just a misogynist, which you and others don’t seem to care much for. And that is misogynist in the PROPER sense, not in the feminist definition of the word.

Literal misogyny. Murderous hate directed at women so intense he was literally indiscriminate.

Selective. He hated other men as much as he hated women. One might say even more so, considering he wanted to rid the world of other men to gain the favour of women. But misogyny is the culprit, as I suspected. Who is it that wants to dictate this conversation again?

And I never said that was not worth pursuing. You however have been very determined to worm your way out of your obligation to provide evidence for mental illness. After all if you have a reason to suspect it I’m allowed to specifically know what those things are. With some actual quoting and justifications for such a label.

I can meet my definitional requirements. You need to meet yours.

I “worm” out of providing evidence for a mental illness that I haven’t diagnosed? I’m arguing that he wasn’t in his right mind. You, on the other hand, seem to think he was completely in charge of his motor functions and completely sane. Because your clique has made up this idea that claiming someone was not sane while doing something horrible, like killing people, planning to kill people, or possibly, chewing other people’s faces off, forms of a stigma around the mentally ill. Well, here’s my argument.

I’d wager if this is the kind of thing sane people do, we’d see a lot more of it. A LOT more. But we don’t. Why is that? If you’re afraid of calling someone who’s not in their right mind not in their right mind when they do something that is clearly not normal by any standards, then how do we distinguish between those who are sane and those who aren’t? Why send people to mental hospitals? Why send people to therapists and psychiatrists? If you don’t think that anyone who truly believes that men are virmin that should be exterminated, and women to be nothing more than chattel, has not snapped and is not in the right mind, then perhaps you are the one that needs help.

If you don’t find hatred of women disturbing, have I got some bad news for you…

Because that’s exactly what I said, wasn’t it. Dealing with an ideologue is tiresome, Brony. Do better.

Privilege theory is not a way for sociologists to analyse anything. It’s a feminist construction, borne out of feminist theory. It’s bunkum. And if you don’t think feminists stereotype men with their idea of “patriarchy” (not the patrilineal but the feminist version) and “rape culture” where men are supposedly in league with eachother to subjugate and oppress women, and find rape to be acceptable, you’re delusional. You cannot hope to be taken seriously when almost everywhere you go, there are feminists (women and men) decrying (mostly) “cis-het, old, white men” in the most demonising way possible.

It’s actually fairly incredible how they try to part blame on any ailment they currently suffer on men. They say men do this, men do that. Including the radical element, there is as far as I’m concerned no difference between feminism and the MRM apart from the target of their ire.

@Carnation 128
Same question, first with me, now with Clarence. Do you dispute his facts ? Do you accept his facts but consider his attitude immoral? Or can you remind him (and me) of some crucial fact we are missing? It would be more interesting if you could come up with something better than insults.

OK, as some1 who is an older virgin, an ‘incel’ if you like, I think I’ll say me piece…

I first joined a support group forum for incels when I was feeling down, in hope of finding some comfort, only to find out it was run by feminists, the bad kind (I’m yet to find any other kind, though I’m open to counter evidence…)… After posting a video which was critical of feminism, I was banned… C’est la vie… I then joined another support forum which was filled with ex members of the other forum and there was even a thread dedicated to the insanity that was that other forum where every1 could talk about their negative experiences, I thought “yay, how reassuring, some sanity” but boy was I wrong, after spending some time there I found out that many of their most prominent members are out and out misogynists… They don’t ban you for challenging them, but nothing gets through to them, so I don’t frequent that place anymore… Bit of a pointless rant that, wasn’t it? Heh, but yeah, it does seem like, if that forum is anything to go by, many incels hate women.. If any1 is curious, check out love-shy.com and you’ll see what I mean… The other feminist site is now defunct, thank Odin…

I’ve never blamed any1 but myself for my situation, I may be the most socially awkward failure to walk the planet, but that’s not other peoples fault… And for what it’s worth, criticism of feminism is not misogyny…

I dispute both of your “facts” because they aren’t facts, they are merely cliches and beliefs formed by experience

Within your life experiences, what you believe makes sense. The old cliche is that women trade sex for love.

Things have changed, dramatically.

Ask yourself a few things… When you have wanted sex with your partner, did you just want a release? Or was it more than that? You wanted to be accepted by her? Flattered by her? Comforted by her? Some or all of the preceeding? Maybe you wanted epic release followed by comfort?

Now, you’re a woman, the fantasy image that MRAs have of women who “control access” to sex. What does she want? Does she want release as well? Will the experience leave her more frustrated than she was to start with? Will her partner want to stay with her afterwards, or just move on? Does she just want attention and will get it via sex but will feel bad afterwards? To be a mere vessel for a man’s pleasure? Maybe she wants a very specific type of sex, one that requires a great deal of trust. Can that trust be built in an instant?

It’s commonly accepted that the male drive peaks around 18, the female at around 40. I think there are far more frustrated women than men out there.

But I will grant you this: if a woman literally just wanted penetrated, then it would probably be easier for her to find that than for a man. But it simply isn’t anywhere near that simple.

I think you’re a clever enough guy. Ally’s other article is about nuance. Try and approach this with some nuance. It’s a complex issue.

I’m really not bothered either way by the MRA/Feminist slapfight but it’s not entirely fair to say that MRA blogs are misogynistic. They may not particularly like certain female behaviours or a political standpoint that claims to be for all women, they may not like the way culture treats the genders, but it’s not often i see something to suggest that women are hated as a sex.

To apply a defence I’ve seen used before regarding feminist blogs that seem anti-man; it isn’t required that you like or respect someone that is wronging you. it is OK to dislike people that seem to dislike you. It’s also striking that a lot of what features on these sites is a gender-reversed version of behaviour seen elsewhere online. Puerile? Oh yes, which is why I have little time for it. but hateful? Probably not, probably just making a point badly.

@Carnation
So, I take you as saying that in terms of raw sex it is in fact easier for men, but that what it is all about is much more complicated than that, and anyway talking about ‘gatekeepers’ is an unhealthy attitude. On those terms I can agree. Though I do stand by my attitudes, just like you stand by your comments.

Isn’t it cute how carnation:
A. Flounced and then came right back into the conversation?
B. Doesn’t address the fact that the madman in this thread had love for some women.
C. Deliberately confuses statements about “group level” sexual desire with statements about individuals.
D. Adds personal insults and snark rather than links and logic

@Pitchguest 135
You really are getting to show me an awful lot about what sort of person you really are.

I outlined “the obvious” below (the misogyny). It’s the mental illness you want to force me to talk about and that you are unwilling to describe.
>”I’m arguing that he might not have been in his right mind.”
No you are obsessed about making me look at mental illness instead misogyny. If you did have a real argument to go to mental illness you would be actually pointing at things. Lazy-ass needs to do his job.

>”You get to be interested and ignore everything else, apparently.”
See? Nothing at all about your claims anywhere. You are only interested in me and what I am trying to look at. You desperately want to get me to stop talking about misogyny, and desperately want to avoid offering evidence for your claims. I don’t know how much you have read about logic in debates but when people have claims, they offer arguments. You don’t get to duck out of that by using equivocating things like “could’ve”, aliens could have probed his brains too. I’m unimpressed and am more sure you are actually afraid of me talking about misogyny, and your avoidance of evidence for your position is so like a creationist that it’s no coincidence. I have felt this worm squirm before.

Link me to the section where he talks about hating all men, I’ve already demonstrated that I’m happy to consider evidence. Because every part that I have seen on that account so far indicates that his hatred of men directly stemmed from the experiences that made him hate women. He did not hate men because they were men, he hated men because of his hatred of women. Get the link Pitchguest. Video with a time point or a text. Come on, educate me. It’s continuing evidence of fear at this point to keep waving at youtube like I’ll care how you feel about his youtube videos, I want to see you point at his literal words to support your specific argument. You are the one talking about mental illness and trying to use it to prove some phantom bias, I don’t have an obligation to make arguments for things that I don’t bring up. Stop throwing a temper tantrum because I won’t let you force me to talk about something you don’t like.

It is the most amusing formula:
1. Implicate me in dishonesty for not talking about mental illness (when I have no problem with other people talking about it) when it is less in evidence than misogyny.
2. Pretend that it’s insignificant that you are the one that is bringing up the subject less in evidence, and don’t want to offer good reason (the evidence of mental illness) for changing the subject from the thing more in evidence.

If your reasons for changing the subject are not good there is literally no reason to change the subject logically. Unless of course your reasons for changing the subject are not based on getting consistent with reality, but rather “winning” in a more primitive sense.

>”Even though he killed and injured more men than women, it still is characterised as a misogynist killing.”
Because of the volume of woman hatred against women, and the fact that his hatred of men was rooted in his hatred of women. The existence of his hatred of men was predicated on his hatred of women. It would not have existed without it. What are the anti-PUA folks mad about as a group again? You refuse to point at the killers words because you can’t. This is all about suppressing discussion of misogyny, not trying to talk about “could’ve” (it’s so fucking weak).

“Nerd”. I love it! It’s like I put some stereotype putty on the table and you are only happy to fold yourself into any shape you need to make excuses. I refused to change the subject to mental illness, your pathetic question does not need to be considered because I have as much evidence that he was demon possessed at this point. I have good reasons to look at misogyny and am content to look at what the evidence is giving us now until the media passes along some official diagnoses, of you do. I am unaware of any evidence indicating mental illness and until such time as that evidence comes to light I will not aid you in forcing my head from things in evidence without reason.

Sarcasm does tend to be one of the things I can have issues with. But at least I know how to follow an evidence trail.

>”That is ALL you pay attention to, Brony. Nuance doesn’t exist in your world.
Except that you have yet to offer me the reason to consider other options. It amazing how much you run from showing me something you insist I should already be looking at.

>”I’ve seen emotional reactions – from various feminist bloggers,…”

And here is where you start trying to connect me with other people and avoid reasonable demands for evidence. This is the way that authoritarians get eventually when their emotionally based ploys start failing. The desperate “ewww! You associate with people I don’t like!” and “Look at what this person did that I don’t like!”. Outside of rhetorical use to my benefit I will be ignoring all the other meenies on the internet so we can focus on our exchange.

Note that I have avoided “Oooo look at that MRA!” and “You’re just an MRA!” or some other tired crap myself. I can do better?

>”Selective. He hated other men as much as he hated women.”
Your argument. Make it. Show me the link. He belonged to a group men mad at men because of women. I’m allowed to speculate on the rational basis that his misogyny was foundational until you provide something convincing. I’ll keep doing it, you can’t stop me and you obviously want me to. Unless you bring up that whole evidence thing it’s all misogyny because I am satisfied that this is where the evidence leads despite your desperate need to paint me as part of some nefarious group.

>”I “worm” out of providing evidence for a mental illness that I haven’t diagnosed?”
You are the one bringing up mental illness. I’m not going to even remotely pretend that it’s my job to talk about what you want me to talk about.

Fuck that “clique” bullshit. We have an interaction here. Focus on that. Tribalism is tiresome.

That he was not in his right mind is not yet in evidence. You are literally repeatedly asserting it as fact and the standard for all asserted facts is rational skepticism. I have reason (misogyny seems foundational, is more in evidence by volume and intensity) so i am skeptical until you provide evidence. If I can point to his misogyny in his words you can show me why anyone should assume he was not in his right mind. You at least have a basic understanding of the division between a therapist and psychiatrist, continue.

>”If you don’t think that anyone who truly believes that men are virmin that should be exterminated, and women to be nothing more than chattel, has not snapped and is not in the right mind, then perhaps you are the one that needs help.”
So it’s not enough to bring up things not in evidence, refuse to offer reason to change the subject to things not in evidence, and make implications about my desire to talk about things that you don’t want me to. You have to suggest that somehow I am the one detached from reality. As with previous patterns you offer no evidence and again this constitutes a subject change from the evidence for your reason to change the subject to mental illness.

You are fascinating Pitchguest. I’m willing to keep this up just to get a better idea of how you are reasoning “behind the scenes”. But I will also continue to be happy to consider the evidence for mental illness if you decide to bring it up at some point.

@ Brony 58
“Disturbed” most definitely = “mentally ill” in this context. (h/t Skep tickle) It’s specious to argue that, because not all types of mental illness are anti-social psychoses, we may not use the term “mentally ill” to describe Rodger.

@ Brony 64

… connected to specific evidence from the misogynistic trash that can be interpreted as having their logic altered by the changes that condition causes, anything speculating that this was caused by mental illness has a very high evidence list to hit.

That’s just wishful thinking, contrary to scientific evidence, to fit events your a priori, dogmatic views. By implying that misogyny creates mental illness, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Anti-social psychoses simply do not develop that way; rather anti-social individuals seek out targets for their hatred and rage. Are you claiming anti-semitism created Hitler’s monstrousness, instead of an already monstrous Hitler finding a suitable scapegoat in the Jews (and communists, and slavs, and ultimately, in the German people themselves, for failing him?)

Take away the Jews, and Hitler would have found some other scapegoats to exterminate. Give Rodger a larger penis and a lubricious, blonde GF, and he still would have found someone to blame for his many personal shortcomings.

The assumed catalyst as to why Karl went on the rampage was that he was demoted by a teacher in charge of the debate team, and that this caused murderous frustration in him. Do you think Karl would have had so much murderous frustration if he was receiving as little as a blowjob every so often?

I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks, playing on their sexual desires … And the women who drink and make out, doing everything short of sex with men all evening, and then go to his apartment at 2:00 a.m.. Sometimes both of these women end up being the “victims” of rape.

But are these women asking to get raped?

In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.

They are freaking begging for it.

Damn near demanding it.

And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.

Feminism has done a great deal of damage to white nations. It has essentially turned white women against white men in what seems like an ever-escalating gender war. It has convinced white women that white men are a disposable, unnecessary part of their kids’ lives. It has also lowered birthrates in white nations by convincing women that in order to have a life that they can be proud of, they must compete with men in the workforce, thus neglecting their natural imperative to have children.

I wouldn’t go so far as to advocate the traditional blather of “women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen”, but a white woman who does not produce at bare minimum 2 white children is failing to do her part for her race. Without reproducing, regardless of whatever other pro-white actions she has taken in her life (unless they were truly remarkable), she has failed her race. White men who also refuse to reproduce with white women have failed their race as well. Obviously people who are infertile have a valid excuse and should pursue other means of contributing (such as raising adopted white children to be racially aware), so I don’t want to say that there is no way that they can contribute, but for everyone else the rule applies.

Unfortunately for a lot of men, the choice of whether they have children or not is not available to them, either through involuntary celibacy or simply being too undesirable. Feminism has also ratcheted up the degree to which hypergamy is in effect in young women, with the resulting belief among most young white women being that unless a man meets a laundry list of specifications then he is practically invisible to them. This leaves a lot of young men lonely and a lot of women childless as they don’t understand that their standards were unreasonable until it is too late to have children.

I could go on and on endlessly, but the battle against feminism is most definitely a white rights issue.

You are the one making an argument here in favor of mental illness. I don’t need to talk about it, because I have seen no reason to suspect mental illness yet. If you believe that there is a reason to to suspect mental illness, that is your argument to make and I am willing to listen.

You mean, other than the part about the history of treatment for mental health issues, the rambling manifestos blaming the world for his unhappiness, or the elaborate plans to murder his roommates and strangers, and then the cold-blooded execution of those plans?
Fair cop, Brony — you win the debate.

So I can acutely dissect out some things in my behavior as being altered by my need to intellectualize some parts of social interaction. It results in little logic flips in how my emotions respond to social information. So I missed some sarcasm because the intent was fuzzy to me.

Ulrike Meinhof suffered from a brain tumor that is believed to have radically altered her personality. Baader, Ensslin et al., and the later copycats of the Rote Armee Fraktion, were clearly sociopaths from the outset, drawn to a movement that gave an excuse to enact their inherent violence. For many young Wessis at the time railed against materialism, opposed the Vietnam War, or sympathized in abstract with the PLO. Only this lot were capable of blowing up people, hijacking planes, and shooting hostages in the head.

I heartily recommend THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (2008) for its raw depiction of this group’s unfettered savagery and utter lack of empathy for other humans. Especially significant is the performance by the excellent Hannah Herzsprung as a new recruit who, unlike her compatriots, is wracked by remorse after a cold-blooded murder.

@Carnation,
As far as I know, CAFE in Canada has an offline presence and does advocacy work. Some talks at universities have happened too, and I believe some fundraising. Small stuff but still something at least.

@ Brony 149
What I hear you saying is: creating rambling manifestos blaming the world for one’s unhappiness, making elaborate plans to murder as many people as possible in revenge, then carrying out those plans, is consistent with the behavior of a sane person. Got it.

“I hesitate to give you the attention you so obviously crave, but will in order to challenge your stunted worldview.”

Hahaha! I love how your pathetically weak attempts at insults only end up indicting yourself. I respond, at most, to maybe one out of ten of Ally’s posts while you obsessively create long-winded, pointless responses on every single post he makes. If I crave attention, then you are a ravenous bottom feeder of the Elliot Rodgers variety. And you are clearly more stunted due to the fact that I actually have a life while you spend all your time on Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men!

“You previously supported Gingko’s cretinous statement that every straight woman “trade on sexual access” in every dealing with a man.”

Wow, not only are you an idiot, you’re a shameless liar. You do realize that people can read the “How to be a Douchebag” article and see that you’re lying? I never even responded to Ginko’s posts and the only thing I wrote that even touches on what you’re referring to is this:

“You are such a feminist drone that you are incapable of complex insights and can only rely upon ideologically-approved platitudes. Men and women relish being sexually objectified and exploiting the power that comes with it. Men and women also want to be respected for their character and appreciated for their individuality.”

“Because you’re a manosphere devotee, you are unable to imagine a world without an all powerful feminist oppressive overlord.”

Because you’re a soft-minded ignoramus, everything you’ve just said is devoid of any facts whatsoever.

“You will be unable to refute any of this paragraph, and you trot out the wearisome refain that MRAs would have “taught” this murderer not to value himself based on approval of women.”

Lol. So this is your basic strategy: write sentence upon sentence of illogical blather without any supporting evidence in an attempt to exhaust people with your idiocy. Why don’t you make things easier for yourself as well? Simply make one single argument that’s coherent and backed up by evidence. Easy peasy.

“The collections of blogs that constitute this fake movement is nothing more than a straightforward and self-serving drama triangle.”

It seems you sure are obsessed with something that is “fake.” By your own accord, you are suffering from severe paranoia. I also think it’s humorous that I never begin conversations with you, ever. You only begin them with me.

If you dont think killing people while they sleep and then going out in to public to kill some more people doesnt point to a mentally unstable person, well, good luck with that brain of yours because it sure looks to me like we might be witnessing another malfunctioning one.

“Come on! Try to stay on this planet. It is wrong to use this crazy bastard as a stick to beat all MRAs with. But admit at least that he did hate and resent women, and that his main motivation seems to stem from not getting laid. What has that got to do with misandry?”

I’ll remain on the planet of facts and logic, not the one of uninformed idiocy that you reside on.

If it wasn’t for misandry, Rodgers wouldn’t have internalized the notion that his humanity and self-worth were based on female approval. He also would have believed that all men are worthy of relationships, not just himself. And, he wouldn’t have ascribed to the “one true Alpha” mind set which is the apexuality that MRAs rail against.

“If it wasn’t for misandry, Rodgers wouldn’t have internalized the notion that his humanity and self-worth were based on female approval. He also would have believed that all men are worthy of relationships, not just himself. And, he wouldn’t have ascribed to the “one true Alpha” mind set which is the apexuality that MRAs rail against.”

Thank you for demonstrating that Rodgers was fairly typical of MRA thinkers by showing that your thought processes are very similar to his.

>”What I hear you saying is: creating rambling manifestos blaming the world for one’s unhappiness, making elaborate plans to murder as many people as possible in revenge, then carrying out those plans, is consistent with the behavior of a sane person. Got it.”

How you interpret my words is meaningless. Your feeling about what you see will help no one. I don’t really care about your impressions. A description of your perceptions of what you see, logically connected to concepts with examples is what matters.

This matter both in the presence of mental illness, and in your perceptions of me. In both cases you fall short so I’m getting enjoyment out of seeing such logical flipping and flopping to avoid one’s duties as a person trying to talk about something supposedly in evidence. I’m always amused at what people choose to take from their environment.

@ JT 154
>”If you dont think killing people while they sleep and then going out in to public to kill some more people doesnt point to a mentally unstable person, well, good luck with that brain of yours because it sure looks to me like we might be witnessing another malfunctioning one.”

You fit the same form as above. You desperately need to say something, you can’t or won’t defend your need to look at mental illness, so you have to resort to my person. You have no idea how familiar this territory is.

You imply an absence within me. The hypothesis in your head that you are testing is “He lacks empathy about X”, but you know the null-hypothesis still exists because instead of showing me why you think something I said demonstrates a lack of empathy about X, you toss out qualified suggestions that are actually meant for everyone but me.

The qualifications are how you try to get away from a direct accusation of “How dare you suggest I have not empathy”, but I don’t follow that script. If you have a reason to challenge my empathy you should present it, if you can’t I’m quite allowed to continue to believe that at least three people here have a bad habit of reacting to things emotionally. I remember that sort of thing for strategic purposes.

“Thank you for demonstrating that Rodgers was fairly typical of MRA thinkers by showing that your thought processes are very similar to his.”

Wait, so you believe the opposite, then? That men should base their self-worth on female approval, that men aren’t worthy of having relationships, and that we should laud “true alphas”? Or is it simply that you’re an idiot incapable of making sense?

No actually, I think your words are idiotic. Very well said, but idiotic none the less.. Ive looked at mental illness quite clearly, in fact, it has been an intimate part of my life on several levels. I just think your words expressed by whoever you are on the other end of the screen are idiotic. If that means you as a person, then so be it.

Doesn’t address the fact that the madman in this thread had love for some women.

Love? For some women? He had nothing of the kind. He wanted trophy women, and no other, and he admits – manifesto or video, can’t remember which – that he was less interested in sex than he was in “having” a hot babe that other men would envy.

The bare minimum for “love” of another person would be conversation or similar social interaction with them. He never once approached any woman for any reason. He expected them – and only the “hot” women – to approach him.

Silly. Childish. Unrealistic. Immature. Greedy. Self-centred. All of those things.

Mad. Maybe. Bad. Certainly.

The one thing that many people seem to miss is that it’s possible to be both mad and bad and that the bad can be more relevant or important than the mad. It certainly doesn’t look as though he was a good, worthwhile, honest and upright person temporarily overtaken by mania. He’d been planning this massacre for two whole years.

He might have turned out to be a good person if he’d actively participated in the therapies, activities and other help and advantages that his family and others tried to give him or get him to engage him. He chose to stay with his rage and continue his plans for murder and mayhem.

No. He’s right. You DID just say that you think the opposite of what he said, and if you don’t then you didn’t put any thought into it. But then you can make it all better by claiming everyone else is a troll, or attempt to persuade the blog moderator to see your point of view by demonising the opposition. Are you sure you’re not a cultist? Or is it perhaps you traded one ideology for another?

He had love for his mother and grandmother and his sister. That constitutes “love for some women”, in my book.

He actually wrote this down in his manifesto. It’s available for everyone to read, but you have to be willing to do the research.

He didn’t actually “hate” women either. At least not fully. He had more of a love/hate relationship, in that he put women on a pedestal (mostly quote unquote “hot” blondes) and then resenting them for not giving him the attention he felt he deserved. As for other men, his hatred was to the ones who could socialise, talk to and eventually “get with” women, stating that he once liked his brother but began loathing him when he developed social skills he did not possess. He planned to kill him, too. He also outlined (or more like fantasised) how he was going to kill off all other men so he could get all women to himself.

He was a very “disturbed” young man. A misanthrope. A ticking time-bomb.

Let me get this straight. Despite the fact that none of us have attempted to actually diagnose Rodger with a mental illness and that doing so would be unwise both ethically and factually, you WANT us to provide a diagnosis?

To even suggest that he might not have been well mentally is beyond the pale?

Then allow me to rephrase the question. Do you think Elliot Rodger, a seemingly straight, “white” (mixed race) male, reflect the behaviour of all seemingly straight, “white” males? He thought it was perfectly fine to murder men and women; men for being brutes and women for denying him sex. Since we’re not providing a diagnosis (ethics and all that) and since we’re adverse to call someone mentally unwell, what are we supposed to call the actions of Elliot Rodger? Par for the course?

No one has said (least of all I) that all people mentally unwell have the potential to commit mass murder, nor that society did not influence him. However you and the more ideological among you (WithinThisMind, mildlymagnificent) focus on the misogyny aspect, while in his manifesto he lays out his plans to kill mostly everyone who’s wronged him, men and women alike. Except for his grandmother, mother and sister. He mused on exterminating all other men to have all women to himself, and he mused on using his apartment as a lure to kill unsuspecting men, torturing them, flaying their skin off their bodies before he does it. He killed his roommates as they slept with multiple stab wounds.

If that was fueled by misogyny, his ire was seriously misplaced. And to claim, as many have, that his actions were inspired by MRA’s is just insulting our intelligence. That’s like saying that feminism inspired Valerie Solanas to shoot Andy Warhol. Idiocy.

Think logically. If Elliot Rodger was completely sane, and his actions were completely normal, what does that make the rest of us? (No one’s calling you a killer, Brony. Don’t take it personally.)

And I am sure millions of men have gone through what he did, yet they don’t go shooting up the place. What was specific to him to crack so bad? Even guys I’ve known hating women were just bitter and usually grow out of it, especially if they meet some cool women but these types of shooting are extremely rare compared to the entire male gender. Something was not right. Hell from what I’ve seen so far of his life, I had women treat me a shitload worse than he did but I still love plenty of women, managed to lose my virginity and value my female friends bigtime. There was a time I was bitter but even still I loved women and was just sick of meeting bad women, I didn’t go around being violent to anyone nor did I want them to die. I’m sure many of us have our painful stories that for us don’t go sending us off the deepend, but for him would probably make him wanna kill the universe so what is it about him that is different? Plenty of autistic guys who’ve had terrible luck with women don’t wish anyone dead, I’d say 99.99999999% of them infact.

@Matt Cavanaugh 150
You making one point for me. There were lots of left-wingers talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the inevitable rebellion of the oppressed, but only a tiny minority went on to maim and kill. It does not make sense to blame socialism, or resentment against women, as something inherently murderous.

On the other hand, claiming that only an insane person could ever do a violent crime is too much of a tautology. In ordinarty terms you an say that ‘there has to be something wrong him in order to do that’, but ‘insane’ also means that you are not responsible for your actions, that there is no need to look for outside causes, that this action is unpredictable, and that the only thing we need to do is to improve the mental health system. I can not accept that this holds in every case.

>”Let me get this straight. Despite the fact that none of us have attempted to actually diagnose Rodger with a mental illness and that doing so would be unwise both ethically and factually, you WANT us to provide a diagnosis?”

Yes. Because no one just gets to toss around mental illness without good reason.

That word gets used in politics against ones opponent so I am pretty damn sure that most people have no fucking clue whatsoever how to properly recognize mental illness beyond someone having hallucinations or some other crap that obviously involves logical problems with thought. In a hallucination you can point at the things the person thinks they see. In the shooter case you can, apparently point to things that are pretty evident in human behavior and easily seen in our history. The seething murderous black and white hatred of another is not hard to find. Oh you are obviously bothered by his behavior, but in a really vague way that just has you waving in the direction of his video. That is weak pathetic shit.

People don’t just bring things up out of nowhere. They have reasons to bring them up. There is in your head a reason for why you are bringing up mental illness. That is what I am interested in. That is the only thing that can make me interested in mental illness as an explanation. There are plenty of people that think it’s perfectly fine to go and kill a bunch of someone elses all over the world. Some even end up in government so people can become sick enough for mass murder and look perfectly acceptable to everyone else.

And when people play the “I’m just asking questions” game they do that for a reason too. You don’t “just ask questions” unless you don’t like the answers already in evidence. Since the investigation just started, the evidence for woman-hatred is obvious, and I see no evidence for mental illness so you are going to have to do more than this weak “I’m just asking questions” crap. Glenn Beck does it better.

I’m long past the conclusion that you are here not to “just ask questions” about mental illness, you are interested in de-emphasizing misogyny otherwise you would have given me your specific reasons for suspecting mental illness beyond “argument from waving over there”. Continuously referring to the situation and video in nonspecific terms is utterly unacceptable. Do your fucking homework. You can huff and puff about how you think it’s so wrong of me to not even consider the possibility until you turn blue, preferably until you turn blue.

His hatred of men was most likely predicated on his hatred of women. There is no men hatred that was not somehow connected to women. Meanwhile there is a huge amount of misogyny that anyone can easily see that needs no men to exist in his head, and it predates any problems that he had with men. I’m following the best evidence we have at the moment until someone presents something better. That you want to flee from what is in evidence and go running towards things that you can’t describe, rather reminds me of religion.

Hey, Ally? If you want evidence that maybe you should rethink your stance, all you need to do is look at who is supporting you.

This is pretty revealing as to what you think of Ally’s intellectual integrity. It is also a ringing endorsement of peer-pressure and a guilt by association fallacy to boot. Will the Bush’esque You are either with us or against us be trotted out next?

@WithinThisMind 163
Was that for me? Because avern does not support Ally either.
Now I do not share either Ally’s politics or Ally’s remarkable integrity, but I like to think that he and I both are willing to talk to and occasionally to agree with people with all kinds of different opinions, not just the ones from our own in-group. Can you say the same?

claiming that only an insane person could ever do a violent crime is too much of a tautology. In ordinarty terms you an say that ‘there has to be something wrong him in order to do that’, but ‘insane’ also means that you are not responsible for your actions, that there is no need to look for outside causes, that this action is unpredictable, and that the only thing we need to do is to improve the mental health system.

When speaking of “criminally insane” — not realizing one’s actions are criminal, you are correct. One must possess mens rea to be held culpable for a criminal act. Certainly, too, one can be neither clinically nor criminally insane, and still commit a crime, if one’s mores conflict with society’s. Say, a man who believes his wife deserves to die for cheating on him. Compare that to Rodger’s delusional belief that all blonde women and all other men deserved to die, for conspiring to keep him a virgin. If Rodger was aware his actions were wrong according to society’s more, he could thus be considered not criminally insane, but still be clinically insane.

Rodger’s delusional persecution fantasies, and his expressed desire to murder, were known to his family and his therapist(s), and also brought to the attention of the police. In the US, police and care providers who witness someone expressing a desire to harm themselves or others, are legally bound to detain that person. It’s supposed to be automatic, no interpretation or evaluation of the person’s state of mind required. To deter violent crimes by this particular type of perp, consistent application of this policy would indeed be effective.

That word gets used in politics against ones opponent so I am pretty damn sure that most people have no fucking clue whatsoever how to properly recognize mental illness beyond someone having hallucinations or some other crap that obviously involves logical problems with thought. In a hallucination you can point at the things the person thinks they see. In the shooter case you can, apparently point to things that are pretty evident in human behavior and easily seen in our history. The seething murderous black and white hatred of another is not hard to find. Oh you are obviously bothered by his behavior, but in a really vague way that just has you waving in the direction of his video. That is weak pathetic shit.

What are you talking about? I “wave” in the direction of his video (and his manifesto) because it shows a man who was willing (and obviously, able) to carry out murder on a mass scale, and because you see the way he thinks and speaks and it’s chilling. It’s “weak pathetic shit” to suspect that this man did not possess a healthy mind, or “disturbed” as you say (tell me, what is the difference between your “disturbed” and mentally ill anyway?), applying a general rule to the majority of the population? You never answered this and you keep evading it, but you think it’s perfectly normal when a man goes on a mass spree-killing because he’s been denied sex, or alternatively to exact revenge on the ones having more sex than he does? This is an everyday occurence?

People don’t just bring things up out of nowhere. They have reasons to bring them up. There is in your head a reason for why you are bringing up mental illness. That is what I am interested in. That is the only thing that can make me interested in mental illness as an explanation. There are plenty of people that think it’s perfectly fine to go and kill a bunch of someone elses all over the world. Some even end up in government so people can become sick enough for mass murder and look perfectly acceptable to everyone else.

Yes, there are and have been perfectly sane people who’ve thought and think it’s perfectly fine to kill people. In wars. In self defense. Protecting someone. Other reasons. Drugs. Money. Love. However, and this is the kicker, I don’t imagine there are a lot of people who think it’s perfectly fine to mutilate their enemies, flaying the skin off their bodies and then killing them. (As was one of Rodger’s fantasy about other men.) Even in wars, and war is hell, that would be monstrous. Then, of course, there are the people who relish in their own madness. Like Josef Mengele. Even you, who seems to think that any mention of mental illness (or just someone mentally unwell) means they must be talking about you, can’t deny that Josef Mengele was one sick person.

And when people play the “I’m just asking questions” game they do that for a reason too. You don’t “just ask questions” unless you don’t like the answers already in evidence. Since the investigation just started, the evidence for woman-hatred is obvious, and I see no evidence for mental illness so you are going to have to do more than this weak “I’m just asking questions” crap. Glenn Beck does it better.

What the feminist bloggers and media have decided to focus on was his YouTube video where he did say he was going to kill every “blonde slut” he found, but what they neglect to mention is a whole different kind of nuance, in his manifesto where he both harbors love and hate for women, and extreme hate for the men he thought unworthy. But feminists don’t want nuance – they want sensationalism. They want people to have an emotional reaction, and oh boy did they get one. Here was the scapegoat they’ve been looking for all along. Misogyny rife in our culture! Society teaches us to hate women! Just look at Elliot Rodger!

If I can’t say there was something wrong with Elliot Rodger (with his views on women, men and killing them indiscriminately) because that’s causing “splash damage” (how?), when the mere thought of what he did or why he did it repulses me, then you are indirectly implying this is something that’s inherent in all men, and the actions he commited are completely normal and completely sane.

I’m long past the conclusion that you are here not to “just ask questions” about mental illness, you are interested in de-emphasizing misogyny otherwise you would have given me your specific reasons for suspecting mental illness beyond “argument from waving over there”. Continuously referring to the situation and video in nonspecific terms is utterly unacceptable. Do your fucking homework. You can huff and puff about how you think it’s so wrong of me to not even consider the possibility until you turn blue, preferably until you turn blue.

Oh, no, I’m just “JAQing off” like all men do. Avert your eyes.

Why would I be interested in “de-emphasising misogyny”? What could I possibly gain from that? Oh, and you are berating ME for not doing MY homework? Funny.

His hatred of men was most likely predicated on his hatred of women. There is no men hatred that was not somehow connected to women. Meanwhile there is a huge amount of misogyny that anyone can easily see that needs no men to exist in his head, and it predates any problems that he had with men. I’m following the best evidence we have at the moment until someone presents something better. That you want to flee from what is in evidence and go running towards things that you can’t describe, rather reminds me of religion.

Now who’s angling? Why do you want to emphasize the misogyny?

I want to flee what is in evidence? His manifesto contains far more gruelling words towards men than any towards women, and this is somehow predicated on his hatred of women? He was a very generally, as you say, “disturbed” young man who didn’t care much for either men or women. This is evident, and yet you want to focus on only one part of this spectrum? And the fucking irony of comparing it to religion at the end. Hol-ee fucking shit. That takes the cake.

Let’s be very specific. A person finding enjoyment in cutting up animals to see what their insides look like. Not a doctor, not a veterinarian, not a biologist; an ordinary person. How would you describe this person? Would you describe this person as someone who’s mentally unwell or perhaps suffering from some kind of mental illness, or would you just describe them as “disturbed”? And in your opinion, what is it that distinguish the two?

Here’s the difference between anger/hate and nuts. The angry hateful person rants and stomps their feet and flails their arms in opposition to the people who they are angry at or actually hate. The person who is fucking nuts grabs a gun and goes and kills as many people as they can. Misogyny, Misandry……..no way. Just plain old fucking nuts. And you still sound like an Idiot.

I’m very late to this thread (been on a camping holiday, returning from the wilderness and singing round the campfire to news of this latest depressing atrocity sucks) but frankly I think you have to be reaching a hell of a long way to find any motivations for his crimes not rooted in a sense of his own entitlement – to sex, to admiration, to status, you name it. Possibly this overinflated sense of entitlement was a product of his privileged upbringing; possibly it was a backlash against being ostracised and bullied: I know from my own experience as an unpopular teen that one of the most common ways for the ostracised to comfort themselves is to develop a sense of superiority towards the dominant group, to consider oneself as ‘misunderstood’ or ‘special’ to account for the hostility or indifference of one’s peers. It might have been to do with his brain chemistry. Who knows, or ever will. Either way, I think it is safe to say that this sense of being somehow special, superior, more worthy than others was a pathology created by his unique circumstances and experiences, rather than the influence of our sexual culture.

Nonetheless, the sexual culture dictated the outlet this sense of frustrated entitlement took. He considered that as a ‘superior’ male, he was entitled to his pick of women. He did not snatch this idea out of thin air, or fabulate it from his pathology. It is to be found everywhere in our popular culture – everywhere that the tired old trope is bandied about that women as a group control sex and exchange sexual access only for secondary benefits like money and status. Everywhere that sex is described (by men or women) as a commodity or a ‘reward’ that women have and men strive to obtain from them (by trade, bribery or force). Everywhere where men’s DESIRE for sex is conflated with a NEED or a RIGHT, and everywhere where women’s desire for sex is abnegated or elided with a desire for some corollary – money, protection, children, a relationship.

To try and pretend that his misogyny (misogyny: he hated women, as a group, because he felt they were denying him something – namely, access to their bodies – that was his by right) was not the primary motivation of his crimes, including the murders of his male victims, is to wilfully stick one’s fingers in one’s ears and refuse to listen to a word he actually said. And to be honest, what he actually said is all we have to go on as to his motives at the moment.

And as for all the people saying “He killed more men than women!” or “he loved his mum and sister!”, ergo he could not POSSIBLY be a misogynist? Please. That’s like saying Anders Behring Breivik could not POSSIBLY be a racist because he mostly killed white children. This is not a flipping numbers game – women don’t ‘win’ because fewer of our ‘team’ got taken out. And to say that he hated other men as a function of his misogyny, not as a result of misandry, does not detract from the horror of their deaths or underplay them in any way.

And this whole case, by the way, is precisely why I always come down so heavily on threads where people even attempt to imply that anyone is somehow entitled to sex, or ‘need’ sex, and that ‘pragmatically’ we need to address that ‘need’ rather than talking about ‘idealism’ (i.e. the idea that sex is an optional and voluntary activity which must always be predicated on mutual consent). No-one is entitled to sex. Sex is about freely given consent by both (or all) parties. Even if that DOES mean that straight men as a group want more sex than straight women as a group are willing to have with them. Even if that means some people end up having no sex at all. That is just life, and the result of basic human rights. No-one ever died from a lack of sex.

If this loathsome individual had had this fact drummed into him from day one, rather than being soaked in a culture which told him that as a rich, powerful male he was SUPPOSED to have his allotted portion of sex and was being ripped off/was a failure if he didn’t get it; that women were sex slot machines which just required the right input for sex to fall out, and if that isn’t what happened for him then the machine was BROKEN; that women were choosing other men over him not because they just happened to be the men that they fancied and he wasn’t, but for shallow, arbitrary and materialistic calculating reasons which entitled him to despise them rather than accept their right to make choices. If instead he had been raised in a culture which told him that his own and other people’s bodies and desires were their own right and their own responsibility, then MAYBE this horrible thing wouldn’t have happened, and 7 families wouldn’t be grieving right now.

Sorry, but that’s just not true. Are you saying every Nazi was ‘nuts’? Every Bosnian Serb at Srebrenica? Anyone throughout history who participated in a Jewish pogrom? Was Breivik ‘nuts’? If we say that everyone who ever killed someone out of hatred was ‘nuts’ then we will need to quash all the murder convictions and open a lot more secure mental wards. Rodger planned this carefully. He had a philosophy, however warped, within which his actions made perfect sense. This was not an impulsive rampage.

Also, defining murder as invariably being the result of poor mental health has a very serious impact on those struggling with mental illness who would never dream of harming anyone (except possibly themselves).

Brony, why don’t you call on some of your rhetorical assassins to help you win the game?

Seriously, though, what I don’t understand is that even though he was seeing mental health professionals for years, and they and his parents, who presumably knew him best — certainly better than you do — apparently felt he had mental health issues, and yet you, who doesn’t know him at all, insist that he doesn’t have mental health issues. Huh?

There is a corner of the internet known disparagingly as ‘the manosphere’ which has several distinct compass points, united only by their shared misogyny.

It’s what they call themselves, actually. Since you are unaware of that basic fact, I very much doubt that anyone can take your charges of “shared misogyny” seriously.

I have a few questions, namely, how you came to the latter conclusion (e.g. “shared misogyny” of the manosphere), and how exactly you define the word “misogyny”? When you define it the way you use it, could you please provide two borderline examples of misogyny? Please be honest in your evaluations. Thanks.

@lelapalute
“And as for all the people saying “He killed more men than women!” or “he loved his mum and sister!”, ergo he could not POSSIBLY be a misogynist?”

I don’t think anyone has claimed that he was not a misogynist (aside from those arguing that if he hated both men and women the correct definition would be misanthrope).

Up thread I am one of the people pointing out that he killed more men that women. I did that because (to summarise) I found peoples’ talking about this solely in terms of violence against women to be both hurtful and harmful in the face of four dead men.

Those who pointed out his love for mother and sister were (to my recollection) doing so to argue against the idea that as his hatred of men was selective (sexually/socially successful) while his hatred of women was indiscriminate he should be viewed only as a misogynist and not as also a misandrist. Their point was that as his hatred of women was not entirely indiscriminate (or else why would he want to kill his brother but not sister) this argument is invalid. Their intention is that his misandry be recognised, not that his misogyny be ignored.

If you can see what would be wrong with a headline proclaiming “Six dead- including two women” (which, if memory serves I expect you do), I would hope you can see why some of us are making this effort.

(Just to head off a potential misunderstanding, I acknowledge that his hatred of women was, by all accounts, greater than his hatred of men. I just believe that given that his hatred of other men still rose to the level of ‘murderous’ it is very wrong to ignore its existence.)

Hi. I agree with most of your post, but I think your crusade against ‘entitlement’ is neither just nor likely to succeed. If you are missing out on something you desperately want, while most others are getting it and there is nothing you can do about it, well you will tend to get both angry and bitter, either at those who are rejecting you or those who get what you do not. It makes no difference whether we are talking about sex or promotion or money, the feeling is the same. It is neither pretty nor helpful, of course, but it is rather hard to avoid. And if many men share this experience, possibly because ‘straight men as a group want more sex than straight women are willing to have with them’, well they will notice, and compare notes, and base their courting strategies on this observation. Of course what people need to do is to come to terms with their feelings and get over it (there is not much that can actually be done), but it is easier if you acknowledge the feelings first. Just telling them that they are not allowed to feel like this and they ought to wait in serene calm for whatever fate or womankind has decided to bestow on them, well it is not going to make the process easier. I know it is not an exact parallel, but we do not make a point of telling our children that they are not entitled to a living wage or a decent place to live, even if it might cut down on theft and violence generally, do we now?

Nor can I see anything particularly odious in people deciding that they would like more sex than seem to automatically come their way, and that it might be easier if they tried to provide something in return. Barter might work, up to a point, and it is not obvious that passivity and self-pity will be any better.

Anyway, there is sense, and some hope of success, in telling people that spreading murderous hate and revenge fantasies over the internet might give them some responsibility for the next atrocity. But spreading the guilt for this particular killing spree over everybody who feels that the world might have let a bit more sex come their way will surely be rejected – rightly – as too much.

I just realized that what you are saying (which I pretty much agree with) is basically the same as Ally’s “Offense” post from a little while ago.
You can’t tell people not to be offended or that they shouldn’t be offended, offence is a subjective experience and you cannot tell people to not have it. The same thing goes for being hurt. It doens’t matter how bad a reason you think some one has for being hurt, it is not reasonable to tell them to not be hurt. Being hrt, like being offended is a subjective experience.

Of course as Ally points out in his Offense post, you can reasonably tell them “You’re hurt, I don’t care, fuck off”. Just don’t expect that response to result in them being any less hurt (or to express that hurt in any more healthy ways). Not that that means you should never do it. Got to look out for your own hurt too 🙂

In Rodger’s manifesto there is no sign of even a slight interest in gender politics.

Are you fucking kidding me? That’s about as stupid as saying the videos made by Islamist suicide-bombers show no sign of interest in Islamist politics. How can explicit hatred of one gender not be construed as “gender politics?”

And the quote you cite a mere two paragraphs later disproves your allegation: he explicitly states the same mindless hatred of women, based on frustrated entitlement, that drives the “gender politics” of the MRAs. The same mindless hatred of women I hear from your regular commenters every damn time I come here. That hatred is not just a “tell-tale sign of MRA ideology,” it IS the ideology. And your lame attempt to deny the connection, just because Rodger didn’t use certain words, pretty much blows a good fraction of your credibility to hell.

To blame either mental illness or online misogyny for these crimes is to dodge the question of where those deranged beliefs, the anger, the nihilism, the hatred originated.

He showed both mental illness and participation in online misogyny — why can’t we blame those two factors, at least partially? They’re clearly part of “where those deranged beliefs…originated,” so it’s not “dodging the question” to bring them into the discussion. If he’d killed Jews after participating in anti-Jewish online forums, we’d all be acknowledging a link; so why can’t we do the same for a guy who kills women after participating in anti-woman forums? It certainly makes more sense than blaming his childhood crushes, as some lazy assholes in our “news” media are doing.

Quite simply put, it’s likely that he would have felt the way he felt and did the things he did without the manosphere. He wasn’t radicalised by a bunch of online misogynistic halfwits, he radicalised himself.

But what’s important is that much of what he says would not be out of place in the manosphere.

If you are missing out on something you desperately want, while most others are getting it and there is nothing you can do about it…

This is a false premise — there is rarely “NOTHING” you can do in such situations. You can change how you act, where you socialize, which kind of women you ask out, how and where you ask them out, and a variety of other behaviors. You can also take some time to reexamine the basic priorities that drive your actions. Insisting that you’re totally powerless and everyone else BUT you is the cause of your agony, is a sure-fire way to paint yourself into a corner where deranged lashing-out violence looks like the only option. It’s classic paranoia, and more to the point, it’s just plain FALSE; and mindlessly parroting a false belief of that sort makes you part of the problem, not part of any solution.

@Raging 190
What you are saying is certainly good advice. It is better for your chances of success, and it is better for your peace of mind. That does not contradict the fact that some people have very little to work with, and that after years and years of doing the best you can and failing, it is kind of hard to muster the optimism necessary to keep trying.

As a parallel, there is always something you can do to try to get richer. That does not mean that it is your own fault you are poor (whatever some Americans say), or that you should be happy and content with whatever you happen to have.

He wasn’t radicalised by a bunch of online misogynistic halfwits, he radicalised himself.

I find it hard to believe that being egged on has NOTHING to do with bad behavior — especially bad behavior by someone with a history of mental illness. Plenty of people (myself included) have been known to drift away from bad behavior simply because they got little or no encouragement for it.

We call it a good thing when GOOD behavior is encouraged by others, so denying that such encouragement is a factor in bad behavior is pretty dishonest.

@Raging 192
As an abstract statement it is quite true that bad behaviour can be encouraged – just like it is true that people tend to search out sites that confirm what they are thinking already. That one can be hard, but the situation here is much simpler. The point these people are making (I have not read the outpourings myself) is that there is no evidence that this person actually read or was influenced by any of the MRA sites. No matter how much his violence is egged on it does not matter if he never read it. But, as Ally is pointing out, various antiwoman sites (no names, no packdrill) might not be so lucky next time.

Gjenganger, we have been over it and over it. I’m tired of your lazy comparisons which you yourself acknowledge are not in any way equivalent. We’ve already dealt with ‘sex as washing up’ enough times. Do we really need to go backwards to ‘sex as money’ or ‘sex as resource’? Really?

There is an abundance of resources in this world (food, shelter, water, knowledge) which, qua themselves, belong to no-one. Therefore, it is reasonable and just to and just to arrange society so that everyone has as much money, food, education etc as they need for a fulfilling life. Sex (can’t decide whether to yawn or weep to find myself going over this A-FUCKING-GAIN) is NOT a ‘resource’ belonging to all people in common, and to which all people are entitled. Sex is an activity which two or more parties engage in by choice. Like conversation, or dancing. It is not an essential for living, however much someone might desire it, any more than regular salsa is. It is not a ‘resource’ that one person can give to another. The fact you still think it is, and the fact you still make these comparisons (even attempting to suggest that telling a man that no, he is not entitled to sex is comparable to economic injustice) is just… exhausting. It is exactly what is wrong with our sexual culture.

And I am not telling people what they are ‘allowed’ to feel. I don’t disagree with you that wanting ‘something’ and not getting it when everyone else is (despite the fact that this is almost certainly a colossally skewed interpretation of the reality of the situation) would indeed be painful, hurtful and could well provoke feelings of bitterness. People are fully entitled to their feelings, which, as Sans-Sanity says, are subjective. But I am saying that people have a responsibility for what they do with their feelings. If they assess them as subjective responses susceptible to rational interrogation, and behave accordingly, they are taking responsibility. If they stamp their feet and act out and spray vitriol everywhere, they are responsible for the effect that behaviour has. And if they decide to swap the vitriol for bullets, then they are fucking well responsible for that too. I really don’t think that saying this is ‘telling people what they ought to feel’.

I do, however, think society at large and social messages (for example, the hypersexualised media which might well play a part in developing the skewed impression that ‘everyone’ apart from the poor unfortunate in question is ‘getting’ sex, the slut-shaming and victim-blaming culture that makes many women both disinclined to make sexual approaches themselves and afraid to accept them, etc etc etc) has a significant impact on those feelings in the first place – they don’t just spring up out of a hole in the ground. If men were socialised to see sex as a pleasurable activity for both sexes, rather than a two-way yardstick based on quantity (for men, the more sex, the more ‘alpha’; for women, the more sex, the bigger ‘slut’) then perhaps they would not be tying themselves in psychological knots if they were still virgins at 22, or feeling hard done by when they went home from the club by themselves, and transforming that self-loathing into loathing of the women who ‘deny’ them sex (or, to put it as it in fact is, don’t have sex they don’t want to have for the benefit of someone else).

Again, I do not think that this is 1984 mind control; it is perfectly normal to try and imagine a better society with happier people. Who, exactly, is made happy by the current state of affairs? The self-hating, frustrated men? The abused, despised women who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t? The men and women bending over backwards and jumping through hoops for sex based on PUA tricks or The Rules? The people having sex they don’t want, either to chalk another score up on the slate or to appease a partner who thinks they have ‘earned it’?

And finally, as I have said before – what, exactly, is your alternative to my ‘crusade’ against entitlement? For one thing, way to misrepresent me as some sort of fundie. For another, so you think my contention that a sense of sexual entitlement is unhealthy and to be discouraged is ‘unjust’? What then, to you, is the ‘just’ response to a young man like Rodger (pre-massacre, obviously) who is spitting with bitterness at all the women he desires who don’t want him (women outside his very narrow definition of ‘hotness’, of course, never getting a mention) and boiling with resentment of other men (even his own little brother) who are ‘getting’ what he thinks he deserves? Do you really think the just response would be to indulge these feelings, validate them? And if not, what ARE you suggesting?

I don’t think anyone has claimed that he was not a misogynist (aside from those arguing that if he hated both men and women the correct definition would be misanthrope).

Fair dos, I should have been more clear – people were claiming that this was not a misogynistic attack, when to my mind it pretty clearly was. The men he hated he hated because of his misogynistic belief that he was entitled to sexual access to women’s bodies, whether they liked it or not, and that they were instead bestowing themselves unjustly upon other men, of whom he was passionately jealous. He hated these men because he hated these women. If he had not held these hateful beliefs about women, he would have had no cause (at least by his own logic, such as it was) to hate the men.

Up thread I am one of the people pointing out that he killed more men that women. I did that because (to summarise) I found peoples’ talking about this solely in terms of violence against women to be both hurtful and harmful in the face of four dead men.

It would; but I don’t think anyone on this thread was doing that. The media have, because the media is, for the most part, as dumb as a pig-knuckle. And I agree with you (and Ally) that it does a colossal disservice to the young men he murdered to only speak about the deaths of the women, in the same way that war reporting sickens me whenever they speak of civilian casualties and append “many of whom were women and children”, as if all those murdered men were any less dead or any less tragic. However, it is not ‘talking about this solely in terms of violence against women’ to acknowledge that the men and women murdered were murdered because of a rage and hatred rooted in misogyny, not misandry.

Those who pointed out his love for mother and sister were (to my recollection) doing so to argue against the idea that as his hatred of men was selective (sexually/socially successful) while his hatred of women was indiscriminate he should be viewed only as a misogynist and not as also a misandrist. Their point was that as his hatred of women was not entirely indiscriminate (or else why would he want to kill his brother but not sister) this argument is invalid. Their intention is that his misandry be recognised, not that his misogyny be ignored.

He wanted to kill his brother because he saw him as a sexual rival. As he did not want to fuck his mother or sister, he had no reason to hate them – they were not denying him anything he wanted. However, he hated the women he hated (a select subset of women he wanted to fuck who did not want to fuck him) because of fundamentally misogynist beliefs about men’s (specifically, his) entitlement to sexual access to the women they desire. He hated the men he hated because they got those women. It all tracks back to his misogyny, not his misandry (for which there is no evidence I can see, although you are right that he does seem to have been pretty misanthropic overall, bearing in mind that misogynistic + misandric ≠ misanthropic).

You raise several valid points, but seem to arrive at conclusions at odds with those points. Permit me to summarize your arguments as I understand them:

1)
* Unpopular teens like Rodger often develop a delusional sense of superiority or specialness to compensate for their social ineptitude. This can lead to anti-social behavior later in life;

* Rodger may have had a chemical imbalance of the brain;

* Rodger suffered a pathology which was not derived from “our sexual culture”;

*** Nevertheless, Rodger’s killing spree was “primarily motivated” by a popular culture that presents sex as a reward.

2)
* The vast majority of people understand that not getting all the sex you want is just a part of life;

*** Nevertheless, the message that Rodger was entitled to sex from “slot machines” was “drummed into him from day one” by society.

3)
* That women control access to sex is “a tired old trope”;

*** Nevertheless, men do want more sex than women are willing to give them.

Please explain these apparent contradictions. Also, how does his hatred of fellow asians fit into the ‘learned misogyny’ hypothesis?

Speaking only for myself, I don’t recall being exposed to such social messages. I’ve never felt entitled to sex, yet have had no difficulty in regularly establishing mutually-fulfilling platonic & romantic relationships with women. I’m not claiming that no men have acquired that outlook, but I question whether it is ubiquitous or even prevalent.

It would be helpful to the discussion if those (like Miri, for example), who insist that all men are brain-washed/poisoned by these messages, would provide some concrete examples of these putative messages, then show a causal link between them and killing sprees. Offering an explanation as to why the overwhelming majority of men are not driven to murder & mayhem by this brain-washing would also be nice.

@ Pitchguest 175
>”No one’s “tossed around” mental illness.
You are. You brought it up without offering reason to do so other than referring to a video and his actions.
>”No one’s diagnosed him.”
That is the problem.
You offered feelings about X. Fuck feelings about X, I need descriptions of X. Anything more is a bunch of people deciding things based on feelings. Feelings are often not to be trusted. Tying feelings to evidence that best explains patterns is fine.

>”… and because you see the way he thinks and speaks and it’s chilling.”
More feelings about X.

>””It’s “weak pathetic shit” to suspect that this man did not possess a healthy mind, or “disturbed” as you say (tell me, what is the difference between your “disturbed” and mentally ill anyway?), applying a general rule to the majority of the population?”
Depending on what you mean by “healthy mind” since that is even less precise. You can get to an “unhealthy mind” through socialization and mentally ill is an application with more substance and specific characteristics that you should be able to point out. I already gave you my feelings on the word disturbed and it’s use at length above.

>” You never answered this and you keep evading it…”
I’m not evading anything. I’m refusing to play your game where I have to answer questions about what you are introducing as if I have a need to. Both the suggestion that mental illness should be considered (or “unhealthy mind” or whatever term I doubt you understand well), and the suggestion that mental illness played a role are separate claims and you are making the first one.

>” Yes, there are and have been perfectly sane people who’ve thought and think it’s perfectly fine to kill people.”
Which is why you have the burden of proof with respect to directing attention to mental illness.

>” However, and this is the kicker, I don’t imagine there are a lot of people who think it’s perfectly fine to mutilate their enemies, flaying the skin off their bodies and then killing them… Then, of course, there are the people who relish in their own madness. Like Josef Mengele.”
If this was even relevant to showing that the misogynistic trash was mentally ill, this is where you tell me why they were mentally ill, and once you have demonstrated they were mentally ill you can tell me how this demonstrates that misogynist trash was mentally ill.

>””Even you, who seems to think that any mention of mental illness (or just someone mentally unwell) means they must be talking about you, can’t deny that Josef Mengele was one sick person.”
Without the black and white characterization, yes. I am aware of how badly mental illness gets abused by people who desperately want explanations for terrible things done by terrible people that don’t look so abnormal when you look at what people in positions of power (or out of power through history) are capable of.

People supported by lots of others in their terrible work who were not likely all mentally ill (suggesting that people just don’t have a mental illness sensor unless they know the patterns first hand). I’m sure some people in history that did terrible things were mentally ill, but that does not mean the misogynist trash was. I’m asking someone to do what they are supposed to do when persuading another to consider an alternative explanation. Give me your reasons, not your feelings about X. Fuck your feelings. Fuck my feelings. Fuck feelings when it comes to evidence.
(Feelings about one another between you and me are fine independently of argument evidence though. Dislike me all you want. I can dislike you and still assess your evidence independently of evidence about your character.)

>” What the feminist bloggers and media…”
Irrelevant to our discussion. You are quite capable of sticking to what you and I are saying, relate all points to our exchange.
This bit is interesting though.
>”…in his manifesto where he both harbors love and hate for women, and extreme hate for the men he thought unworthy.”
That’s a tiny bit more specific about the content in the videos so you can apparently do a bit more than wave when it’s to your advantage. But damn, if you think he is showing love have you got some problems. I want to see the section you are talking about. And if you think that his hatred of men is somehow more intense than that for women have you got problems making category errors. His universal hatred for women, hatred for particular men, and the pattern it takes over time, in volume, in descriptiveness, and intensity.

>”If I can’t say there was something wrong with Elliot Rodger…”
Wrong. You can say something was wrong with the misogynist trash and I have not implied otherwise. As I have been continually pointing out my issues are specifically about why you think something is wrong with him as we are emphasizing different wrong things.

>”… then you are indirectly implying this is something that’s inherent in all men, and the actions he commited are completely normal and completely sane.”
Wrong. Please demonstrate where I said they were normal. Clearly these behaviors are not normal as few people go on shooting sprees or attach murderous hatred to black and white thinking processes (Those last two are a lot more common).
Please demonstrate where I said he was sane. My whole position at this point (of which you show no apparent comprehension if this is what you conclude) has been that I see no evidence that he is insane. When I speak of him being “standard issue humanity” I speak of the broadest of human possibility that includes terrible behaviors much more common in the past (due to changed moral values and social structures and thankfully so). I’m quite willing to entertain it if the media passes along evidence of insanity/mental illness, or if you show me the specific behavior that you believe correlates to some specific insanity.

>”Why would I be interested in “de-emphasising misogyny”? What could I possibly gain from that?”
Because you display evidence of desiring to win rather than being interested in presenting your reasons for things pertaining to your introduced subject. So I’m making the rational observation that winning on an emotional level is probably your goal.
Because you are not interested in supporting your arguments, yet it seems you just can’t stand people looking at the misogyny connection alone, or emphasizing it as the evidence suggests we should. That implies a strong emotional investment and an inability to do more than “mark some territory”.
Because the need to mark territory in a tribal sense is also obvious from the fact that you need to continually bring in perceived slights from other people you only refer to as feminists.
Because you seem to need to see me as thinking all individual men might be likely to do something like this despite the fact that I have not implied anything of the sort (we have different birth circumstances, life history, and socialization).
Because in our conversation you needed to refer to your perception (probably true in some cases, but irrelevant) that other people are linking MRAs as a group with the misogynist trash inappropriately when I have not once even mentioned MRAs.

I’m sure I could come up with more but it’s obvious that you don’t see this situation in terms of evidence, you see it as us/them. While I have actually chosen “sides” I don’t need to constantly bring any sides up because I would love to see your evidence. With links and cited sections.

>”Why do you want to emphasize the misogyny?”
I emphasize that which is most in evidence as a means to learn the most about the misogynist trash. Then I move on to other things that may be secondarily related AFTER evidence of their relevance is demonstrated. It’s what you do when you investigate.

>”…and this is somehow predicated on his hatred of women?”
All the examples I have seen are him hating men because of reasons that had to do with women. Black and white seething murderous hatred of women came first and was an element in his hatred of men. If you have any evidence of something that does not fit this pattern please present it.

>”This is evident, and yet you want to focus on only one part of this spectrum?”
The part that is in evidence. Yes. His hatred of men is relevant and important, but less explanatory of his behavior.

>”And the fucking irony of comparing it to religion at the end. Hol-ee fucking shit. That takes the cake.”
Well I hope you liked it, I thought it tasted like shit.

@ Pitchguest 176
>”Let’s just break it down, Brony.”
Try to make it look like the picture on the box this time.

>”A person finding enjoyment in cutting up animals to see what their insides look like. Not a doctor, not a veterinarian, not a biologist; an ordinary person. How would you describe this person? Would you describe this person as someone who’s mentally unwell or perhaps suffering from some kind of mental illness, or would you just describe them as “disturbed”? And in your opinion, what is it that distinguish the two”
Wow. You can substitute my earlier answer perfectly so you apparently did not pay attention to it. The box had a demon on it, how did you make a mess like this?
Context makes it different. Those doctors, veterinarians and biologists get their curiosity from somewhere. If I discovered that an otherwise well socialized child with no cruelty or bullying behaviors was cutting up animals and they displayed curiosity and a fascination with medicine or biology, I would have no problems. I would also have no problems with a child that was helping a parent process animals after hunting (I did that as a kid). I’m sure there are others. You are really good at letting your tribal associations direct where your imagination is allowed.

@ lelapaletute 178
Now that’s not a bad possibility. If we chase back the misogyny we may find that a pathological sense of entitlement was at it’s root, and shaped by his unfulfilled biological desires. The presence or lack of skill, role-models, and tools that made this occur would be interesting to explore.

@ johngreg 180

>”Brony, why don’t you call on some of your rhetorical assassins to help you win the game?”
Nah, I’m doing fine on my own. And organizing people to deliberately swoop in to fend off hoards of harassing abusing commenters in the posts of the beleaguered bears more thought anyway.

>”Seriously, though, what I don’t understand is that even though he was seeing mental health professionals for years, and they and his parents, who presumably knew him best — certainly better than you do — apparently felt he had mental health issues, and yet you, who doesn’t know him at all, insist that he doesn’t have mental health issues. Huh?”
The reasons for why he was seeing the professionals need to be outlined and specified. People see mental health professionals for lots of reasons.

I’m afraid your summary of my arguments is way the hell off. You might do better if you address the points you think are in error by direct quotation, because at the moment you have me saying things I did not, in fact, say. Say what I actually said, then say why I’m wrong in your opinion, and I can do something with it. At the moment, it just looks like you haven’t read what I said properly.

Also I don’t know who Miri is? Possibly you are following several threads at once and have mixed them up – that would explain how you have managed to get me so wrong, if you are conflating my posts with those of other posters.

@Lelapaletute
There are a lot of things I agree with here. Of course sex is not a ‘resource’ and requires two consenting parties (I am hardly going to propose compulsory conscription to brothels for young women, am I now?), you are certainly responsible for what you do with your feelings (or anything else), and I would be very happy to see a more friendly and relaxed culture about sex. I just do not see how your better state of affairs could work, which would mean that we are stuck with some of the problems.

It seems to me that it is not enough that people “see sex as a pleasurable activity for both sexes”. To get the effect you want they must also see it as (stretching a point) a nice but ultimately unimportant luxury, where it makes little difference to your life if it ever happens or not. “So, I never got to do that. It might have been nice, but bah!, who cares. Maybe I would not have liked it anyway.” now that works fine for horse-riding or hang-gliding. But for sex? Quite apart from the biological drives of it, sex is too tied up with intimacy, love, whether other people value you, … We might all be happier if we lacked these desires (and others as well) but I cannot see how we could ever get there. As for the two-way yardstick, it clearly has a lot of historical baggage. But it would also be a fairly straightforward consequence of a situation where sex is highly desirable and always hard to get (for men) and therefore becomes an important symbol of status and value, whereas it is much in demand from others and therefore precious (for women) so that dishing it out too freely would cheapen it. The obvious way out of that dynamic would be to make it easy for all to get, but I am not sure that is possible (or desirable).

As for Rodgers, he is surely beyond my skills – I am not competent to counsel potential mass murderers. I might suggest that he accept his situation, terrible feelings included, concentrate on getting the best he could actually obtain, bad as it might seem, and keep his murderous rage to masturbation fantasies and away from real people. But I doubt that that (or anything else) would have any effect. More to the point would be how to deal with one of my mates complaining that women always went for others, asked you to be nice, and then went with the bad boys anyway. Here I would sympathise, buy another beer, agree that there were a lot of us no better off. And say while being a nice guy did not in itself bring you far, women did not prefer bad boys that I could see, just confident ones. Which, alas, neither of us were. Let us have another beer. Hopefully we would feel better for having shared our sorrows (once through the hangover). What I would certainly not tell him was that this kind of attitude was causing rape and murder the world over at this very moment, and that anyway he was not entitled to sex.

What to propose? While it might make little difference to the results I do think that it would be healthier if, once people are in a relationship, the norm was that they should find a sex life that accommodated the needs and desires of both, rather than saying that whoever wanted sex the least should win all the arguments by default. And I wonder if it makes sense that you still have a moral obligation to be faithful, now that there is no longer any obligation to accommodate your partner. But this problem is not going to leave us, whatever we do.

This was a kid from a relatively rich family, who could afford to send him to a decent college, not some dirt-poor castaway who never had a chance, an education, a healthy family, or a decent role-model. He was NOT doing the best he could have, unless his mental-health issues made him unable to think responsibly. Barring mental-health issues, I’m sure he had plenty of opportunities to change his social circles and increase his chances of finding healthy friendships and relationships.

I know, from being in his position when I was younger, that his loneliness was largely the result of his own choices, not lack of opportunities.

… possibly it was a backlash against being ostracised and bullied … one of the most common ways for the ostracised to comfort themselves is to develop a sense of superiority towards the dominant group, to consider oneself as ‘misunderstood’ or ‘special’ ….

.

It might have been to do with his brain chemistry ….

.

I think it is safe to say that this sense of being somehow special, superior, more worthy than others was a pathology created by his unique circumstances and experiences, rather than the influence of our sexual culture.

.

— vs. —

Nonetheless, the sexual culture dictated the outlet this sense of frustrated entitlement took…. He did not snatch this idea out of thin air, or fabulate it from his pathology. It is to be found everywhere in our popular culture …. Everywhere … men’s DESIRE for sex is conflated with a NEED or a RIGHT….

.

To try and pretend that his misogyny … was not the primary motivation of his crimes … is to wilfully stick one’s fingers in one’s ears….

.

2)

.
… some people end up having no sex at all. That is just life….

.
— vs. —

… rather than being soaked in a culture which told him that as a rich, powerful male he was SUPPOSED to have his allotted portion of sex and was being ripped off/was a failure if he didn’t get it; that women were sex slot machines which just required the right input for sex to fall out, and if that isn’t what happened for him then the machine was BROKEN….

.

3)

It is to be found everywhere in our popular culture – everywhere that the tired old trope is bandied about that women as a group control sex .

— vs. —

Even if that DOES mean that straight men as a group want more sex than straight women as a group are willing to have with them.

So, there is a new meme in the brewing, to wit: We cannot know if Rodger actually killed four men and two women, but probably really killed six women, because the four “men” might have been “trans*”.

/did I get the latest Twitter-verified trending label right? Trans-asterisk? Or should it be trans-Em-dash?

So, what does that tell us? Well, it seems to tell us that all trans are really women. Except, what if the the two women that Rodger killed were trans? Well, um, that’s OK, I guess ’cause all trans either were originally assigned as women, so they’re really women because what the original assigment was is what matters, or the trans are now presenting as women, so they’re really women because it is the now that really matters.

But wait!

What about trans-trans? What about if the trans-woman really identified as pre-trans woman-to-trans-man woman trans who was originally assigned as a man, but wanted to present as a woman pre-assigned as a man wanting to present as a man who is now presenting as a woman?

I don’t even….

And, erm, ah, what if we follow the professorial Hornbeckian Conclusion™ that all gender and sex is a cultural creation, which must then mean that there are no men or women, except as culturally defined, in which case Rodger killed neither women nor men, as they don’t really exist, except in so far as culture determines it, in which case the culture determines which gender/sex each victim was leaving us with the inescapable conclusion that to the general SJW world, Rodger killed women only; to the MRA-a-sphere, Rodger killed men only.

Ah. Good, good, all fixed.

But wait!

What about Otherkins? Does that mean that Rodger really didn’t kill men or women at all, stepping around the Hornbeckian Conclusion™ for the moment, but really killed a mixed group of sea otters, BronyPonies, KittiKatts, and Smurphs? So that leaves us with the inescapable conclucion that Rodger’s primary antisocial dysfunction was a deep seated hatred of Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Yes, it does get confusing, doesn’t it. Can you spell Confusing? I knew you could. And we haven’t even talked about Furries yet!

OMG! OMG!

Hey, I’m not trying to minimize Rodger’s foul crime, but some of the arguments now being presented around the various uber-this-and-that socio-political subgroup rage-communities, et al. are becoming the most ridiculous kind of politics-laden bunkum. Really disgraceful stuff; all agenda-based, forget about the real crime, the real victims, let’s all just asign blame where it belongs on our real enemies whateverthefuck you know who they are!

Right then, thank you for the clarification, now we’re cooking with gas.

1) There is no contradiction between saying that on the one hand, the circumstances giving rise to his sense of grandiose entitlement and superiority in the general sense (a few possibilities were hypothesised) were personal and unique to him; and on the other that the specific direction that sense of entitlement took (hatred of women who did not give him the sex and approval he felt was his due and by corollary hatred of the sexually successful men he felt had usurped that perceived due) was influenced and dictated by the misogynistic culture in which he grew up. He was also a vitriolic racist and classist, again because these are the divisions along which society is drawn, not because his ‘brain chemistry’ made him hate black people (and his own asian heritage) or ‘low class’ people. His specific crimes and the victims he chose were dictated by this aspect of his sense of entitlement.

To draw this distinction is, I think, part of what Ally is trying to do in this article (correct me if I’m wrong, Ally).

2) The first statement in this pair you have chopped off in the middle. The full quote it is part of is:

No-one is entitled to sex. Sex is about freely given consent by both (or all) parties. Even if that DOES mean that straight men as a group want more sex than straight women as a group are willing to have with them. Even if that means some people end up having no sex at all. That is just life, and the result of basic human rights. No-one ever died from a lack of sex.

The very fact that I am making this statement in the context of this thread, and that Gjenganger (among others) is arguing the toss about it, just goes to show that this is far from the generally accepted view, even explicitly – and the subtexts and practices upon which our sexual culture runs are almost directly in opposition to it. Our sexual culture instead peddles the messages I describe in the second statement you quote, in which sex is a need and a right to which people (or at least, certain people) are entitled (see for a substantiating example Gjenganger’s post at 186 where he equates the right to sex with the right to social justice). Again, no conflict if you actually read properly and in good faith.

3) There is a tired old trope that women control ‘access’ to sex and yes this is a tired old trope. Women cannot control ‘access to sex’ because sex is not a fucking natural resource, it is an activity. They can (or they bloody well should) be able to decide who they want to have sex with, in the same way people can decide who they want to dance with. Do we say that men ‘control access’ to dancing if women in general tend to want to dance more than men in general?

As for this initial statement being in contradiction to the first statement, first you will notice I say ‘IF’ – I am by no means convinced that, septic sexual culture aside, straight women in aggregate want to have sex any less than straight men in aggregate. We can’t possibly tell, because we haven’t yet seen how people would behave in a society where the respective values of women’s sexual purity and men’s sexual prowess aren’t pitted against each other in some bizarre game of chicken.

And even if it DID turn out to be true that, all other things being equal, the majority of straight women want to have sex less often than the majority of straight men, that STILL doesn’t amount to women collectively ‘controlling access to sex’. It amounts to them, as individual human beings, having self-determination, quite separate to the desires of other people which are not their fucking responsibility.

Please excuse all the swearing. But I am so very, very tired of having this argument.

@Lela 208
We have argued this before, and we re not going to finish it this time either, But this is not what I was trying to say:

see for a substantiating example Gjenganger’s post at 186 where he equates the right to sex with the right to social justice

You may have a right to social justice, but that is an abstract term. For my money you do not have an absolute right to a living wage or a decent place to live, any more than you have a right to sex. The problem is the same in both cases: if you have a right to something, who has the duty to provide it? To be more precise, if the people of current Bangla Desh or 15th century China had an actual right to live above the 21st century UK poverty line, who were supposed to fulfil that right? It may be true that nobody ever died from lack of sex, but nobody ever died from living In a hovel, either. People can have all kinds of aspirations:, to enough to eat, to internet access, to sex, to a comfortable standard of living. to their own house and garden. As I see it, the difference is not that some of these are worthy and right, and some are unworthy and wrong. It is that some of them can reasonably be fulfilled, and therefore should be fulfilled by the community as a matter of social justice, and some, no less worthy, are simply not obtainable in practice.

Shorter Raging Bee: “I haven’t paid any attention so I’m just going to write this instead.”

In case you didn’t notice, I have discussed the event. I have discussed the event at length. But the mere suggestion that Rodger may not have been running on all four cylinders, your pal Brony rushes in to say make the discussion very difficult by demanding a diagnosis and refuses to define what HE considers to be someone not running on all four cylinders. Because we don’t get to “play that game”, apparently. It’s unsightly.

I drew up a specific scenario of a very specific tone and STILL he won’t give me a definition of what he PERSONALLY feels is someone that clearly is mentally unwell. Since Rodger, capable of coldly stabbing his roommates multiple times (seemingly in their sleep) and then going on a shooting rampage (thankfully cut short), is apparently someone Brony considers to be sane and completely normal, I was wondering what in HIS opinion would be considered insane, but so far he’s evaded the question. With gusto.

Someone cutting up live animals for their enjoyment to see what their insides look like is, evidently, also someone that Brony considers to be completely normal. I begin to worry about your friend. He seems to have some odd ideas about what’s considered normal in this society.

Do we say that men ‘control access’ to dancing if women in general tend to want to dance more than men in general?

If dancing required one-man, one-woman couples, and woman wanted dance much more than men, then, yes, men would control access to dancing. How much dancing happened and who got to dance would depend on the choices of men more than the choices of women. And men would have the power to exploit their scarcity to control the dancing and extract other concessions. Of course many men would simply dance with their preferred partner and not exploit their power, but a wise woman might be a little wary of offending her dance partner, even so.

That is so demonstrably false, on so many levels, that it is hardly worth responding to. Rats; disease; bedbugs; disease; lack of clean water; disease; lack of heating; disease etc. ad infin-almost-itum — and never mind that having to live in a hovel almost always goes hand-in-hand with lack of enough food to eat and inadequate nutrition.

Pitchguest said:

Shorter Raging Bee: “I haven’t paid any attention so I’m just going to write this instead.”

Are you fucking kidding me? That’s about as stupid as saying the videos made by Islamist suicide-bombers show no sign of interest in Islamist politics. How can explicit hatred of one gender not be construed as “gender politics?”

Because he didn’t explicitly hate just one gender. He hated both. And he was very specific in his hatred. He lays it all out in his manifesto.

You would know this, of course, if you made the effort to read it.

And the quote you cite a mere two paragraphs later disproves your allegation: he explicitly states the same mindless hatred of women, based on frustrated entitlement, that drives the “gender politics” of the MRAs. The same mindless hatred of women I hear from your regular commenters every damn time I come here. That hatred is not just a “tell-tale sign of MRA ideology,” it IS the ideology. And your lame attempt to deny the connection, just because Rodger didn’t use certain words, pretty much blows a good fraction of your credibility to hell.

Right. “Mindless hatred of women” is what drives the MRA. And “mindless hatred of men” is what drives feminists. No? I’ve seen plenty of them hating on men. Surely, then, what drives them must be the hatred and resentment towards men. Then there’s the patriarchy theory, rape culture theory, Schrödinger’s Rapist, etc, etc. Theories that make men out to be nothing more than beasts who want to subjugate, suppress and rape women. Or is that, in the warped view of feminism, supposed to lead to equality? Hmph.

Tell you what. If you want to go after the MRA’s, maybe you should get your facts straight, yeah? There are plenty bad things to say about the MRM. There’s no need to embellish. Or fabricate.

To blame either mental illness or online misogyny for these crimes is to dodge the question of where those deranged beliefs, the anger, the nihilism, the hatred originated.

He showed both mental illness and participation in online misogyny — why can’t we blame those two factors, at least partially? They’re clearly part of “where those deranged beliefs…originated,” so it’s not “dodging the question” to bring them into the discussion. If he’d killed Jews after participating in anti-Jewish online forums, we’d all be acknowledging a link; so why can’t we do the same for a guy who kills women after participating in anti-woman forums? It certainly makes more sense than blaming his childhood crushes, as some lazy assholes in our “news” media are doing.

He showed what? Mental illness? Brony alert, Brony alert!

You seem very determined to make it all about misogyny, Bee. Are you trying to dictate this conversation?

As far as I know, Rodger participated in an anti-PUA forum. PUA’s are usually men, aren’t they? And most his victims were men, were they not? (That’s not to make a point, Bee. That’s just to show that you obviously didn’t make your homework and you have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you should, oh, what’s the word, “educate” yourself?)

@ Pitchguest 210
>”Since Rodger, capable of coldly stabbing his roommates multiple times (seemingly in their sleep) and then going on a shooting rampage (thankfully cut short), is apparently someone Brony considers to be sane and completely normal, I was wondering what in HIS opinion would be considered insane, but so far he’s evaded the question.”

That would be accurate if it said “…considers to be sane and completely normal until evidence of insanity and abnormality is demonstrated…”. I’m not adding unnecessary complications to analysis without cause.

>”I was wondering what in HIS opinion would be considered insane, but so far he’s evaded the question.”
Thought patterns that prevent someone from effectively interacting with the outside world because of one of these.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder
It’s the minimum necessary to support an argument, if one cares about being able to do that.

>”Someone cutting up live animals for their enjoyment to see what their insides look like is, evidently, also someone that Brony considers to be completely normal. I begin to worry about your friend. He seems to have some odd ideas about what’s considered normal in this society.”
Well if you find dissection in middle/high school and cleaning up a kill after hunting worrisome there is not a lot I can do except use that for how ridiculous it is.

@lela Thanks for your reply 🙂 The main disagreement that I have with you is that his murderous hatred of other men can be described as being misogyny. It may have some of its roots in misogyny, but as hatred of one gender almost always leads to some messed up beliefs about the other this is hardly a unique circumstance.
For example, I could point out that a large part of his hatred of women stemmed from his misandrist belief that a man who does not have sex is a loser and worthless. Is his murder of the women now misandric?

By the time I was the same age as the boys that he killed, I had been attacked twice by other men because they didn’t like my being with women (once a specific women, once just ‘women’ in general). I would not call those attacks misogynistic, I was attacked because of how they saw me, because of their attitudes towards other men. I doubt that those men had pleasent beliefs about women either. But strong message of society towards men that we should treat each other as competitiors in everything.

When you have the ‘mean girls’ scenario of women tearing each other down in a bid to attract the most attention to boys, would you call that misandry as it comes from their feelings of entitlement to men? Or misogyny because it comes from their beliefs about other women. I would say misogyny.

The misandric message message that men are in a competition, and that other men are obstacles to our success and insults to our failure, is dangerous. When men internalise it too greatly it creates violence – against men – as it did here. Calling it really misogyny erases that and gets in the way of addressing it as a problem.

(Oh, quick litmus test: The draft, when instituted, targets only men. Misogynistic because it says women are not fit to fight, or misandric because men are rounded up and sent to kill and die for being men? If you think both, what is the ‘main’ factor?)

lelapaletute, thank you for clarifying your points. I must still take issue with your claim that “the specific direction that sense of entitlement took … was influenced and dictated by the misogynistic culture in which he grew up”, and that the “subtexts and practices” of “sexual culture” which “peddles the messages … in which sex is a need and a right to which people are entitled.” For one, because it seems Rodger’s sense of entitlement was the epitome of narcissism — he felt entitled to sex not because he was a man, rather because he was Elliot Rodger. For another, because I simply do not detect this pervasive, misogynic culture you say is out there. Hence my earlier complaint that those fingering that culture have so far given no evidence of its existence, much less the causal link.

Earlier,(194) you lament “

If men were socialised to see sex as a pleasurable activity for both sexes….

I was. And in my relationships, it most definitely is.

You also paint a landscape where

.. the slut-shaming and victim-blaming culture … makes many women both disinclined to make sexual approaches themselves and afraid to accept them …
… [men feel] hard done by when they [go] home from the club by themselves, and [transform] that self-loathing into loathing of the women who ‘deny’ them sex …

What a terribly jaded view of sex & romantic relations! I’m truly sorry if that has been your experience, but it most definitely has not been mine, nor that of the overwhelming majority of people I know.

Finally, if you really are tired of having this argument, then don’t make pronouncements in the middle of an open debate, expecting them to be mutely accepted as graven in stone.

”Someone cutting up live animals for their enjoyment to see what their insides look like is, evidently, also someone that Brony considers to be completely normal. I begin to worry about your friend. He seems to have some odd ideas about what’s considered normal in this society.”

Brony:

Well if you find dissection in middle/high school and cleaning up a kill after hunting worrisome there is not a lot I can do except use that for how ridiculous it is.

Not only has Brony’s rhetoric been reduced to sniping about minutiae, he can’t even get those right. One dissects dead animals. Vivisection is of living beings, and nowadays only performed under anathesia. Field dressing of a kill is, of course, performed after the game … has been killed.

Torturing animals is a near universal behavior of future serial killers, mass murderers, and assorted sociopaths. Richard Davis, who abducted & murdered Polly Klaas, had as a schoolboy once torn the legs off the class pet rabbit.

Torturing animals is pretty much a fool-proof litmus test for sociopathy and a harbinger of future depravity against humans. Yet Brony considers it part of normal, sane behavior. Please, Brony — reassure us that the only animals you abuse are stuffed ones!

@ Pitchguest 175
>”No one’s “tossed around” mental illness.
You are. You brought it up without offering reason to do so other than referring to a video and his actions.

Saying someone is (or was) not in their right mind is not tossing around mental illness. You are talking out of your arse.

>”No one’s diagnosed him.”
That is the problem.

What?

You offered feelings about X. Fuck feelings about X, I need descriptions of X. Anything more is a bunch of people deciding things based on feelings. Feelings are often not to be trusted. Tying feelings to evidence that best explains patterns is fine.

I offered feelings about what? About someone being sick? Or should that be “disturbed”? If I’d used the word “disturbed”, would that have made you feel better?

>”… and because you see the way he thinks and speaks and it’s chilling.”
More feelings about X.

What? Yes, feelings. I FEEL it’s chilling. This is forbidden to express? Have I stumbled upon the thought crime police? Have you done this long, Brony? If I went back through the blogs, would I find you everytime someone guesses the poor mental state of other people, including your hero PZ, and you would have the same fervour in lecturing them for their ill-considered assumptions, or would you be mysteriously absent? I wonder.

>””It’s “weak pathetic shit” to suspect that this man did not possess a healthy mind, or “disturbed” as you say (tell me, what is the difference between your “disturbed” and mentally ill anyway?), applying a general rule to the majority of the population?”
Depending on what you mean by “healthy mind” since that is even less precise. You can get to an “unhealthy mind” through socialization and mentally ill is an application with more substance and specific characteristics that you should be able to point out. I already gave you my feelings on the word disturbed and it’s use at length above.

“Healthy mind” to me would indicate someone who’s able to exhibit self-control. Someone with some form of empathy. The ability to know right from wrong. That sort of thing. It’s a bit vague, but that’s off the top of my head. Maybe that’s not precise enough for you. I don’t know. But just know that in my mind, I wouldn’t consider someone plotting mass murder, finding amusement and laughing as they do it, to be of a particularly healthy mind. As for what mental illness ailed him, I don’t know that either, and I won’t try guessing.

>” You never answered this and you keep evading it…”
I’m not evading anything. I’m refusing to play your game where I have to answer questions about what you are introducing as if I have a need to. Both the suggestion that mental illness should be considered (or “unhealthy mind” or whatever term I doubt you understand well), and the suggestion that mental illness played a role are separate claims and you are making the first one.

You would evade my questions as you refuse to “play [my] game”, but when YOU are introducing questions that YOU need – DEMAND – for ME to answer then I have to participate? Somehow I don’t think that’s fair.

>” Yes, there are and have been perfectly sane people who’ve thought and think it’s perfectly fine to kill people.”
Which is why you have the burden of proof with respect to directing attention to mental illness.

I do? I specifically gave qualifiers for situations where no insanity necessarily was involved and Rodger’s does not apply. Because if he had succeeded in his plan as laid out in his manifesto, his apartment (his base of operations) would have been littered with flayed, mutilated men. As already repeated several times, he didn’t hesitate to kill his two roommates. He didn’t hesitate to kill their mutual friend. He stabbed them multiple times. And straight after he went to visit a sorority that, thank goodness, did not open their doors or even more people would have died. He was laughing, for fuck’s sake. This is normal to you? Really?

>” However, and this is the kicker, I don’t imagine there are a lot of people who think it’s perfectly fine to mutilate their enemies, flaying the skin off their bodies and then killing them… Then, of course, there are the people who relish in their own madness. Like Josef Mengele.”
If this was even relevant to showing that the misogynistic trash was mentally ill, this is where you tell me why they were mentally ill, and once you have demonstrated they were mentally ill you can tell me how this demonstrates that misogynist trash was mentally ill.

Why do I think they were, as you say, “mentally ill”? (Can I call them mentally ill now, or should I just call them “disturbed”?) Because Josef Mengele liked commiting experiments on live people – unwilling subjects – that in most cases killed them horribly, and Elliot Rodger fantasised about (though his fantasy was not realised) flaying people alive. Men, specifically. Does that make him a misandrist, or is this where we draw the line? He also found it amusing to shoot people.

“Misogynistic trash.” You’re averse to call him a lunatic, but calling him a “misogynistic trash” is apparently fine. To me, he was a pitying, arrogant, sexually frustrated, spoiled young man with an inflated sense of entitlement seemingly borne out of living in a rich environment wanting for nothing, whom at the end snapped after being bullied and harassed most of his young adult life. He became engrossed in an idea so much that it consumed him. He saw himself as the “alpha male” and every other man beneath him, and every woman as his to own, and he even fantasised about killing all men so he could get them all for himself – including his younger brother (six years old). He had a lot of hate, for everyone. To say he was just a misogynist is understating it. Trash? Lost cause more like.

>””Even you, who seems to think that any mention of mental illness (or just someone mentally unwell) means they must be talking about you, can’t deny that Josef Mengele was one sick person.”
Without the black and white characterization, yes. I am aware of how badly mental illness gets abused by people who desperately want explanations for terrible things done by terrible people that don’t look so abnormal when you look at what people in positions of power (or out of power through history) are capable of.

Abused? We’re talking about Josef Mengele. A description about Mengele from one his subjects is he was sadistic, lacked empathy and had no remorse. He either beat his subjects to death, killed them with a lethal injection, shot them, or “experimented” which was anything from injecting ink straight into their eye sockets, injecting them with typhus, injecting their hearts with chloroform, unnecessary amputations, and much, much more. There’s even a case where he attempted to create conjoined twins by sewing two twins together, who later after a long period of suffering died of gangrene.

Saying that Josef Mengele may have been sick, or “disturbed”, or even mentally ill, is “abusing” mental illness? I cannot say that what Josef Mengele did was abnormal, not part of ordinary and definitely not sane, by fear of “abusing” mental illness? Wow. Just… wow. That’s… huh.

People supported by lots of others in their terrible work who were not likely all mentally ill (suggesting that people just don’t have a mental illness sensor unless they know the patterns first hand). I’m sure some people in history that did terrible things were mentally ill, but that does not mean the misogynist trash was. I’m asking someone to do what they are supposed to do when persuading another to consider an alternative explanation. Give me your reasons, not your feelings about X. Fuck your feelings. Fuck my feelings. Fuck feelings when it comes to evidence.

As I said, there are those that relish in their madness. Josef Mengele was one of them. But if we are forbidden to have feelings and must always rely on evidence (especially when it comes to mental illness), then clearly we cannot establish anything about these two men (Mengele or Rodger) since they are both dead. We can’t even guess at their motives. Misogyny? Are you sure? He definitely expressed a lot of hate towards men, too. Misandry? Misanthropy? I don’t know. Details are sketchy. I think I need some more evidence. Can you provide that evidence?

(Feelings about one another between you and me are fine independently of argument evidence though. Dislike me all you want. I can dislike you and still assess your evidence independently of evidence about your character.)

Good to know.

>” What the feminist bloggers and media…”
Irrelevant to our discussion. You are quite capable of sticking to what you and I are saying, relate all points to our exchange.

Irrelevance? When almost every article that comes up when you search for Elliot Rodger has some kind of feminist spin on it, and the feminist spin is the misogyny angle, I think it’s relevant. Because then they clearly it as something to use as a tool, even though Rodger should more accurately be described as a misanthrope. You, too, keep calling him “misogynist trash.” I wonder why.

This bit is interesting though.
>”…in his manifesto where he both harbors love and hate for women, and extreme hate for the men he thought unworthy.”
That’s a tiny bit more specific about the content in the videos so you can apparently do a bit more than wave when it’s to your advantage. But damn, if you think he is showing love have you got some problems. I want to see the section you are talking about. And if you think that his hatred of men is somehow more intense than that for women have you got problems making category errors. His universal hatred for women, hatred for particular men, and the pattern it takes over time, in volume, in descriptiveness, and intensity.

I’m sorry. Could you repeat that? I have “problems”? What is that? Is that akin to “disturbed”?

Oh, and you want me to show you the section I’m talking about? No no no no. You accused me earlier of not doing my homework. I’m not showing you shit. If you want to know what I’m talking about, you have to read it yourself. All 141 pages of it. Now piss off.

>”If I can’t say there was something wrong with Elliot Rodger…”
Wrong. You can say something was wrong with the misogynist trash and I have not implied otherwise. As I have been continually pointing out my issues are specifically about why you think something is wrong with him as we are emphasizing different wrong things.

Oh, so I CAN say something was wrong with him but it has to be on your terms? NOW who’s trying to dictate the conversation?

>”… then you are indirectly implying this is something that’s inherent in all men, and the actions he commited are completely normal and completely sane.”
Wrong. Please demonstrate where I said they were normal. Clearly these behaviors are not normal as few people go on shooting sprees or attach murderous hatred to black and white thinking processes (Those last two are a lot more common).

You have repeatedly avoided, evaded and refused to define what in your opinion means someone suffering from a mental illness. So far, you have used the word “disturbed.” I don’t know if you think having “problems” means you’re suffering from a mental illness or if that’s a seperate issue, but I don’t think it has something to do with my stomach.

Please demonstrate where I said he was sane. My whole position at this point (of which you show no apparent comprehension if this is what you conclude) has been that I see no evidence that he is insane. When I speak of him being “standard issue humanity” I speak of the broadest of human possibility that includes terrible behaviors much more common in the past (due to changed moral values and social structures and thankfully so). I’m quite willing to entertain it if the media passes along evidence of insanity/mental illness, or if you show me the specific behavior that you believe correlates to some specific insanity.

You don’t think what Rodger did was normal. That means you have ideas of what, in your mind, constitutes as “normal.” If you don’t think it’s normal when someone goes on a shooting spree to kill people, why then is it so farfetched to say it was not sane?

Even if I showed you evidence correlating situations similar to this, and those persons proven to be insane, that wouldn’t prove anything regarding this because they are not Rodger. You are expecting for me to provide you with evidence that doesn’t exist. Even if he did suffer mentally when he commited the shootings, we will never know because he’s dead. But merely ASSUMING that what he did was insane, going what we know of most other people who doesn’t want to commit mass murder (or coldly stab someone multiple times), that isn’t too demeaning of a thought.

>”Why would I be interested in “de-emphasising misogyny”? What could I possibly gain from that?”
Because you display evidence of desiring to win rather than being interested in presenting your reasons for things pertaining to your introduced subject. So I’m making the rational observation that winning on an emotional level is probably your goal.

Desiring my reasons? Reasons for things? I’ve mentioned his manifesto like twenty times. I’ve seen people saying it was a misogynist crime AND BY PROXY claiming we live in a society breeding men to hate women. Using the tragedy to make some bullshit rhetorical point that fits in with their world view. Fuck sake, the whole #YesAllWomen hashtag is just filled with that crap. So my mere suggestion that he didn’t just hate women, but pretty much everyone else to boot, is “evidence” of my desire to win? Bear in mind that’s actually using actual evidence, something that you demand I show you pertaining mental illness. But when it comes to disproving misogyny (or rather, disproving it in the sense that it wasn’t just misogyny) you dismiss it?

Because you are not interested in supporting your arguments, yet it seems you just can’t stand people looking at the misogyny connection alone, or emphasizing it as the evidence suggests we should.

What evidence would that be, exactly? I’m curious. You have read his manifesto, I take it?

That implies a strong emotional investment and an inability to do more than “mark some territory”.

Likewise.

Because the need to mark territory in a tribal sense is also obvious from the fact that you need to continually bring in perceived slights from other people you only refer to as feminists.

Did I bring up the feminists on a whim? No. I didn’t.

Because you seem to need to see me as thinking all individual men might be likely to do something like this despite the fact that I have not implied anything of the sort (we have different birth circumstances, life history, and socialization).

Wait, what? When did I say this?

Because in our conversation you needed to refer to your perception (probably true in some cases, but irrelevant) that other people are linking MRAs as a group with the misogynist trash inappropriately when I have not once even mentioned MRAs.

I briefly mentioned MRAs, as an example, to combat the whole “fueled by misogyny” bit. It wasn’t the main component of my argument.

I’m sure I could come up with more but it’s obvious that you don’t see this situation in terms of evidence, you see it as us/them. While I have actually chosen “sides” I don’t need to constantly bring any sides up because I would love to see your evidence. With links and cited sections.

I see in terms of getting the facts straight. Or, at least, the little there is. By the evidence there is, including the manifesto (and fuck you, I’m not linking to any of it, read it yourself), misogyny wasn’t the only factor.

>”Why do you want to emphasize the misogyny?”
I emphasize that which is most in evidence as a means to learn the most about the misogynist trash. Then I move on to other things that may be secondarily related AFTER evidence of their relevance is demonstrated. It’s what you do when you investigate.

That which is most in evidence, which would be the YouTube video I suspect? Or would it be the manifesto where he wants to exterminate all men?

>”…and this is somehow predicated on his hatred of women?”
All the examples I have seen are him hating men because of reasons that had to do with women. Black and white seething murderous hatred of women came first and was an element in his hatred of men. If you have any evidence of something that does not fit this pattern please present it.

Clearly you haven’t seen “all” the examples since you haven’t read his manifesto.

>”This is evident, and yet you want to focus on only one part of this spectrum?”
The part that is in evidence. Yes. His hatred of men is relevant and important, but less explanatory of his behavior.

>”And the fucking irony of comparing it to religion at the end. Hol-ee fucking shit. That takes the cake.”
Well I hope you liked it, I thought it tasted like shit.

You should’ve thought about that before you made it, then.

@ Pitchguest 176
>”Let’s just break it down, Brony.”
Try to make it look like the picture on the box this time.

>”A person finding enjoyment in cutting up animals to see what their insides look like. Not a doctor, not a veterinarian, not a biologist; an ordinary person. How would you describe this person? Would you describe this person as someone who’s mentally unwell or perhaps suffering from some kind of mental illness, or would you just describe them as “disturbed”? And in your opinion, what is it that distinguish the two”
Wow. You can substitute my earlier answer perfectly so you apparently did not pay attention to it. The box had a demon on it, how did you make a mess like this?
Context makes it different. Those doctors, veterinarians and biologists get their curiosity from somewhere. If I discovered that an otherwise well socialized child with no cruelty or bullying behaviors was cutting up animals and they displayed curiosity and a fascination with medicine or biology, I would have no problems. I would also have no problems with a child that was helping a parent process animals after hunting (I did that as a kid). I’m sure there are others. You are really good at letting your tribal associations direct where your imagination is allowed.

For crying out loud. I crafted a specific scenario of a very specific person, and you STILL can’t bring yourself to call that very specific person suffering from a mental illness? No, I don’t mean displaying a curiosity and fasciniation with medicine or biology. No, I don’t mean someone helping their parent process animals after hunting. I mean, very specifically, someone who finds it very amusing to take an animal; living, breathing animal, squirming, fighting for their life; take a knife to their stomach, slowly cutting their abdomen with a gleeful smile, JUST to see what their insides look like. THAT is the kind of person I’m talking about. Now kindly, could you please stop beating around the bush and just tell me if you want to say this person is mentally ill or not?

@ Matt Cavanaugh 217
>”Yet Brony considers it part of normal, sane behavior.”
Since at no time did I actually demonstrate any support of vivisection you will have to try harder. My examples all involved people cutting up dead animals in acceptable contexts, and I also made an earlier reference to lack of cruelty or bullying behavior among the person doing the cutting being a good sign. You should try talking to someone that was actually making that argument. But I won’t be expecting honest behavior out of you from now on either.

Dude, the FIRST PARAGRAPH Ally quoted disproves your assertion. Here it is again, just in case you’re too lazy to scroll back up:

…many of them share my hatred of women, though unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it. Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are.

So yeah, he explicitly hated women.

Right. “Mindless hatred of women” is what drives the MRA. And “mindless hatred of men” is what drives feminists. No? I’ve seen plenty of them hating on men.

“Plenty?” Really? “Citation required” would be an understatement here. You need to show us the “female Slymepit” where men find a relentless tide of rape-threats, death-threats, old sick unfunny body-function jokes, and repetitive willful vindictive ignorance directed at them 24/7, no matter how many times it’s called out and refuted. I have yet to hear of even ONE feminist who shows even 1% of the hatred I’ve seen from MRAs. The fact that you keep on repeating the same empty accusation, even though it’s never been backed up with any specifics or evidence, once again shows what a ridiculous uneducable piece of work you really are. If you have to wallow in fantasies about women, can’t you at least wallow in PLEASANT fantasies?

@ Pitchguest 219
>”Saying someone is (or was) not in their right mind is not tossing around mental illness.”
Sorry, should I stop switching between jargon and metaphorical language? If you have trouble with that I understand. That means casually using the term like you know what it means when by your use of it you seem to have no idea.

>”What?”
Compare with my response in 214. That some information on specific forms of mental illness so you can attempt to look for how it could have potentially affected the misogynist trash’s reasoning. You are welcome.

>”I offered feelings about what? About someone being sick? Or should that be “disturbed”? If I’d used the word “disturbed”, would that have made you feel better?”
When you wave at a youtube video like it’s reason to consider mental illness without getting specific you are stating your feelings about the video, when what is needed is a description of the things in the video (or writings) that lead you to suspect that mental illness is worth addressing.

>”This is forbidden to express?”
No. But feeling about things are useless in an argument just as it is in religious arguments. You can feel away as I have mentioned several times already. You can hate me and be creeped out by whatever you want. It won’t change a thing about your skills at persuasion.

>”If I went back through the blogs, would I find you everytime someone guesses the poor mental state of other people, including your hero PZ, and you would have the same fervour in lecturing them for their ill-considered assumptions, or would you be mysteriously absent?”
There’s that tribalism again. Piss away doggie. I have no heroes. Role-models are better.

>”“Healthy mind” to me would indicate someone who’s able to exhibit self-control. Someone with some form of empathy. The ability to know right from wrong. That sort of thing. It’s a bit vague, but that’s off the top of my head.”
That’s closer anyway. You can look at mental illness that decreases empathy and self-control and these will have other factors associated with them that you can try to use to confirm your suspicions (which is a subject in neurobiology as shown by a pubmed search). “Healthy mind” is also ill-defined, hence the Wikipedia article. It’s probably flawed in places being wikipedia and all, but it’s a start and will at least get you started on the categories and types of mental illness.

>”Maybe that’s not precise enough for you. I don’t know. But just know that in my mind, I wouldn’t consider someone plotting mass murder, finding amusement and laughing as they do it, to be of a particularly healthy mind. As for what mental illness ailed him, I don’t know that either, and I won’t try guessing.”
Closer. But no not good enough. When people appeal to mental illness to explain their political enemies on a regular basis (I had people hinting at that at least once in here), or insisting that it’s demons or some crap like some religious folks want to claim about their political enemies, I think that the only thing that qualifies is an actual analysis of his behavior lined up next to a description of how illness A screws up cognition in manner B. I did not suggest guessing.

>”…but when YOU are introducing questions that YOU need – DEMAND – for ME to answer then I have to participate? Somehow I don’t think that’s fair.”
Life isn’t fair. This is about persuasion and rationally supported arguments. I don’t make the rules I just know how one actually investigates a question like how hypothetical mental illness might be demonstrated having had experience in academic research. Opinions and feelings about things are cheap when it comes to being consistent with reality.

>”I specifically gave qualifiers for situations where no insanity necessarily was involved and Rodger’s does not apply.”
And none of that included a comparison of his thought patterns and any specific mental illness so there really is no way that you were relating the misogynistic trash to mental illness or “unhealthy mind” or whatever term you want to use. If mental illness is suspected, you look for mental illness.

>”This is normal to you?”
I don’t see how it constitutes evidence of mental illness.

>”Can I call them mentally ill now, or should I just call them “disturbed”?”
Mentally ill has not been substantiated. You can say he is disturbing, but that word has such a wide use that it’s nothing more than another “feelings about X” statement though. Disturbing does not imply mentally ill. Abortion clinic bombers are disturbing (and not necessarily crazy either).

>”You’re averse to call him a lunatic, but calling him a “misogynistic trash” is apparently fine.”
Lunatic is kinda dated, still has mental health connotations so it would not be a good word if one wanted to be specific about some hypothetical mental illness. Yeah he was pretty screwed up with a lot of really toxic things in his head including misogyny, but I still see no reason not to think that he was screwed up in a way that that involves mental illness. I’m not shedding tears over this guy because of the violent path he took. I’m just fine with misogynistic trash.

>”Abused? We’re talking about Josef Mengele.”
You are talking about him. I see no reason to discuss him because you should be looking for conditions with patterns of thought that you believe might have contributed to the misogynistic trash’s beliefs and actions. As for your description of Mengele, it’s not too different than reading about what many wars and invasions involved over recorded history. All the killing and mutilation and torture that went on in the Rwandan Genocide for example except by someone who believed that they could do that for science. I’m sure there are people here in the US right now that if our culture took the wrong turn and they got into a position of authority could wreak all sorts of damage because of what average humanity is capable of.
I’m fine believing culture and regular folks can produce that, but you can always try seeing if anyone did any work to see if Mengele showed signs of mental illness. It’s not relevant to showing if the misogynistic trash was himself mentally ill.

>”Saying that Josef Mengele may have been sick, or “disturbed”, or even mentally ill, is “abusing” mental illness?”
Without actually being able to point to a condition, yes.

>”But if we are forbidden to have feelings and must always rely on evidence…”
Please reread my previous comments and the above addendum in this comment. You can have feelings, they just don’t mean anything when it comes to evidence.

>”We can’t even guess at their motives.”
There is always recorded history. They have their reasoning and patterns can be analyzed.

>”Misogyny? Are you sure? He definitely expressed a lot of hate towards men, too. Misandry? Misanthropy? I don’t know. Details are sketchy. I think I need some more evidence. Can you provide that evidence?”
Misogyny clearly. All the examples of hatred against men that I saw stemmed from his hatred of women. He hated men because of reasons having to do with his hatred of women. He got a little indiscriminate in the killing but since he was willing to kill guys that he felt were the ones unfairly getting women I can accept that he would kill anything in front of him in the moments at the end.
But a pervasive hatred of all men as a class because of what they were? Nah. Unless you have something I should look at. As for the Misogyny, I already provided a quote above that showed the misogyny. But I’m only here to figure out your mental illness claims, that is how this all started when you seized on “disturb”. You have been trying to shift things in that direction but I never stayed here for that. I don’t think you are in this for rational reasons so I don’t think you are worth the effort. I came to that conclusion when I saw how you kept running from defending your mental illness angle. Why would I trust someone that can’t defend the first thing they were pushing for?

If you are not going to defend your suggestion that mental illness be considered at some point I’ll get bored and leave when I think I’ve seen enough of all the different ways you try to keep avoiding basic argument obligations.

>”When almost every article that comes up when you search for Elliot Rodger has some kind of feminist spin on it, and the feminist spin is the misogyny angle, I think it’s relevant. Because then they clearly it as something to use as a tool, even though Rodger should more accurately be described as a misanthrope. You, too, keep calling him “misogynist trash.” I wonder why.”
You are arguing with me. Not the phantoms in your head. When you reference other people in that respect it’s an attempt at a category smear because you are into tribalistic BS. I have displayed no group loyalties of any sort in our discussion and my words stand on their own. I’m not those other people and you should develop the skill at being able to actually address the person you are actually arguing with on their own terms. If I bring one of them up as a source and you believe that source to be wrong fire away, but I did not do that.

>”You accused me earlier of not doing my homework. I’m not showing you shit.”
I demonstrated that you have not done your job of convincing me of a mental illness connection, because you refuse to move beyond how you feel about what you see and won’t move into what the thing you see looks like. You can pretend all you want but I have spent this entire time quite properly asking you to back your shit up and I’m quite comfortable with how things stand between us.
So now I additionally have reason to doubt you know anything about what the misogynistic killer might have had with respect to love.

>”Oh, so I CAN say something was wrong with him but it has to be on your terms? NOW who’s trying to dictate the conversation?”
You are imagining me dictating anything to you but the need to back up a reason to consider mental illness. That would be the “…my issues are specifically about why you think something is wrong with him …”. Of course something was wrong with him. But mental illness is not in evidence.

>”You have repeatedly avoided, evaded and refused to define what in your opinion means someone suffering from a mental illness.”
I gave you a link to wikipedia’s entry on mental illness. Mental illness is a category and I’m not making the argument. Besides I can’t wade into your skull and remove these vague “feeling about X” so I can go pattern matching among the types of mental illness. Do your job.

>”…why then is it so farfetched to say it was not sane?”
Because people make appeals to mental illness and demons and more in political disputes all the time. People are irrational in general, I don’t trust any claim of mental illness without evidence. You are not special to me here.

>”Even if I showed you evidence correlating situations similar to this, and those persons proven to be insane, that wouldn’t prove anything regarding this because they are not Rodger.”
Hence my rejection of your appeals to history because just because X was crazy does not mean Y was crazy. Especially when we have had many that were not crazy and were horrible, and probably some that were crazy and got supported anyway. Which is why I pointed you at a source for information about mental illness so you could take all those vague feels of yours and go find something that might look like it could have altered the misogynistic trash’s thought patterns.

>”You are expecting for me to provide you with evidence that doesn’t exist. Even if he did suffer mentally when he commited the shootings, we will never know because he’s dead.”
Do you really need me to post an article that includes analysis of the writings of persons with mental illness, or their behavior on video? Do you really think that is not a thing? I have a great paper where they took a bunch of people with Tourette’s and watched at their tic rates during different scenes of movies and correlated it with the emotional content of the scenes. You have a text and video (probably with transcripts by now), You have information on kinds of mental illness, start looking for patterns. Or you could just troll through the internet and see if some other obsessed person is already trying this very thing somewhere else.

>”Desiring my reasons? Reasons for things? I’ve mentioned his manifesto like twenty times…”
If you are not going to do your duty as a person advocating a position, I’m going to make some guesses about your real motivations. Tough.
What other people are saying is irrelevant to our conversation unless I bring up a source and you specifically criticize it. Bringing up random people you don’t like and trying to push them on me is pretty pointless since it’s my words you should be responding to.

>”So my mere suggestion that he didn’t just hate women, but pretty much everyone else to boot, is “evidence” of my desire to win?”
No your inability to defend an argument and constant need to point at social groups and people uninvolved in our discussion as a means to try to smear me with your favorite boogey persons is the evidence. It was after that bit.

>”But when it comes to disproving misogyny (or rather, disproving it in the sense that it wasn’t just misogyny) you dismiss it?”
You will have to point out where you “disproved misogyny”. Disproved what with respect to misogyny? It exists as a real concept. Do you mean where you pointed out that he hated some men too? Because that does not detract from his universal hatred of women. You will have to be more specific. You are making less sense.

>”What evidence would that be, exactly? I’m curious.”
It would be the fact that he had a long standing universal hatred of women that pervaded the majority of his expressions of hatred. When his hatred of men started pops up it’s always related to women so I’m convinced that his misogyny was far more foundational to how things progressed than any other hatred. He hated some men because of women. Misandry, a universal hatred of men is fine as a concept all by itself, I’m sure there are some people that hate all men. I just don’t see how it applies to this situation.
But I don’t really think you can be convinced. This is not an evidence thing for you. I’m here because I am fascinated by the irrational. I’m here not because I have been defending the evidence about the misogynistic trash’s women hatred and how it relates to the incident. I think you are too far gone for that and I’m happy with the evidence that I have seen. I’m here because I’m amused by the fact that you keep attacking my disbelief in a possible role for mental illness. You keep trying to get me to defend my skepticism of a mental illness connection like attacking someone’s disbelief is somehow equivalent to you making an argument for why one should consider mental illness. I’ve mentioned what I believe about the situation so far, but at no time have I been trying to defend that with you. It’s all been about how I’m not convinced of mental illness for me.

>”Likewise.”
I do have and use my emotions, and I have emotional ties that keep me here like everyone else who might want to engage in an argument. But in your case you are letting your group oriented emotional connections drive your reasoning. It’s all feminists this, and they said bad things about MRAs that. None of it means anything to demonstrating a claim. For scientists hypotheses aren’t weighed by the identity of the groups or people testing a hypothesis, but by the evidence they use to back up their claims.

>”Did I bring up the feminists on a whim? No. I didn’t.”
Yeah you did. You don’t justify an argument because someone said something you think is incorrect, you justify by citing someone who you think did say something correct. You only brought that up because you wanted to say bad things about feminism. It’s completely unnecessary to making a point about the validity of a mental illness suggestion, or demonstrating what you think the content of the misogynistic trash really was. If I had brought up whatever you were referring to as a source and you wanted to criticize it that would have made sense. But I did not and just because they said something you think is wrong is not evidence you are right.

>”Wait, what? When did I say this?”
#175 “If I can’t say there was something wrong with Elliot Rodger (with his views on women, men and killing them indiscriminately) because that’s causing “splash damage” (how?), when the mere thought of what he did or why he did it repulses me, then you are indirectly implying this is something that’s inherent in all men, and the actions he commited are completely normal and completely sane.”
Underline mine. Since I did not actually say that you can’t say there is something wrong with the misogynistic trash (I said that I am not convinced by a specific something, that’s different) I have to wonder why you might want to paint me as thinking bad about all men. It certainly goes along with all the other tribalistic behavior.

>”I briefly mentioned MRAs, as an example, to combat the whole “fueled by misogyny” bit. It wasn’t the main component of my argument.”
Which you don’t need to mention since I never said that all MRAs are misogynistic. You are arguing against points that I never made. See why I’m questioning what you see in things?

>”I see in terms of getting the facts straight. Or, at least, the little there is. By the evidence there is, including the manifesto (and fuck you, I’m not linking to any of it, read it yourself), misogyny wasn’t the only factor.”
I never claimed it was the only factor. I’m unconvinced that mental illness should be considered a possible factor. While I’m sure that the extra hate he felt against men dating the women he wanted, and men that he thought cheated him with PUA training probably did push him some at the end, I don’t see how anything but the misogyny is foundational to his hate problem. But again, I’m not here because I thought that I would ever have a chance of convincing you of that. I’m here because you keep throwing yourself at my skepticism about mental illness. It’s a bit surreal.

>”That which is most in evidence, which would be the YouTube video I suspect?”
The pervasiveness, intensity, and specific imagery he used because of the misogyny in video and writing. The way that every example of man hatred I read was connected to his woman hatred on some level, and predated it. He hated men that had the women he wanted or cheated him. It was only late that he started going off on hating everybody so the woman-hatred and how it shaped his life is far more informative.

>”No. Read it yourself. Do your homework.”
Nah. I’m not the one that asserted that his manifesto was worse with respect to men. I’m here for the argument about the mental illness suggestions of yours.

>”Clearly you haven’t seen “all” the examples since you haven’t read his manifesto.”
And you know this how?

>”I think I know what your problem is. Read this…”
Oh yes. I am definitely an ideologue with respect to a person making a claim about mental illness having to back up their arguments.

>”I mean, very specifically, someone who finds it very amusing to take an animal; living, breathing animal, squirming, fighting for their life; take a knife to their stomach, slowly cutting their abdomen with a gleeful smile, JUST to see what their insides look like. THAT is the kind of person I’m talking about. Now kindly, could you please stop beating around the bush and just tell me if you want to say this person is mentally ill or not?”
Only if it can be demonstrated that they literally have something wrong with the way that their brain formed and operates. That sort of thing has specific characteristics. People can become cruel sadistic pieces of crap without anything being wrong with how the cognitive plumbing works so if you want to suggest that someone is mentally ill you actually need to demonstrate they are mentally ill. That a pathology has undermined their thought patterns.
And if you are fishing for a specific opinion you need to formulate a specific question. The way I answered was fine for what you wrote.

Raging, you really are being stupid now. Yes, yes, yes, Rodger explicitly hated women. He also explicitly hated men. Therefore he did not, as Pitch said, explicitly hate just one gender.

Do really try to keep up dear.

#YesAllIlliterates

You need to show us the “female Slymepit” where men find a relentless tide of rape-threats, death-threats, old sick unfunny body-function jokes, and repetitive willful vindictive ignorance directed at them 24/7, no matter how many times it’s called out and refuted.

Well, you know, ye old RadFemHub was great for that, including several serious articles on how to bring about gendercide, total emasculation of young boys, and so much more lovely stuff like that. Sadly, they are no longer publically accessible because too many of their members, all women of course, actually worked in both educational and childcare facilities, and parents were begining to get concerned. So RadFemHub had to hide their truly rabid hate behind a drawbridge.

Also, as you very well know, unless you’re just pretending, there is utterly no relentless tide of rape-threats or death-threats on the Pit. None at all whatsoever, actually. Yes, there is some cheesey humour from time to time, but humour is what humour is — to each their own.

thanks for your response, which I actually have a hard time disagreeing with – I think we’re more or less singing from the same hymnsheet, albeit in a slightly different key.

The main disagreement that I have with you is that his murderous hatred of other men can be described as being misogyny. It may have some of its roots in misogyny, but as hatred of one gender almost always leads to some messed up beliefs about the other this is hardly a unique circumstance.

I totally agree with your latter statement, and as to the former, I suppose you are correct that describing his hatred of men as being misogynistic in nature is a bit wrong-headed, purely semantically speaking. So I think we can agree that his hatred of other men has its roots in his misogynistic beliefs, without saying it was misogynistic hatred.

For example, I could point out that a large part of his hatred of women stemmed from his misandrist belief that a man who does not have sex is a loser and worthless. Is his murder of the women now misandric?

By the time I was the same age as the boys that he killed, I had been attacked twice by other men because they didn’t like my being with women (once a specific women, once just ‘women’ in general). I would not call those attacks misogynistic, I was attacked because of how they saw me, because of their attitudes towards other men. I doubt that those men had pleasent beliefs about women either. But strong message of society towards men that we should treat each other as competitiors in everything.

As you point out, this game could get very silly very quickly. I could counter that his misandrist belief that a man who does not have sex is a loser and worthless is itself predicated on a misogynist belief that sex is some sort of baseline right that men are due/require to make them ‘real men’. And so on. It’s probable that this is not a helpful line of enquiry. Shall we agree that all of these beliefs are rooted in sexism, and patriarchal division of gender roles (with the heartfelt hope you will not hear in the word ‘patriarchal’ any sort of accusation that men are ‘in league’ against women – patriarchy oppresses men and women alike, in different ways, pitting them against each other both within and between genders, as your experiences and analysis of them perfectly illustrates).

When you have the ‘mean girls’ scenario of women tearing each other down in a bid to attract the most attention to boys, would you call that misandry as it comes from their feelings of entitlement to men? Or misogyny because it comes from their beliefs about other women. I would say misogyny.

One of the things I think it is safest to say in this world is that women, as a group, do not feel ‘entitled’ to men. I also don’t think women competing with other women is misogyny any more than men competing with other men is misandry. I don’t see how women ‘tearing each other down to attract the most attention [from] boys’ gives you any indication of their beliefs about other women, merely that they think that is what they need to do to garner male approval, and that male approval is more important/valuable cultural capital than female solidarity. Which, in the current cultural set-up, is a correct assessment of the practical situation.

The misandric message message that men are in a competition, and that other men are obstacles to our success and insults to our failure, is dangerous. When men internalise it too greatly it creates violence – against men – as it did here. Calling it really misogyny erases that and gets in the way of addressing it as a problem.

This I completely agree with. What is misogynistic isn’t the pressure Rodger felt under to compete with other males, and the jealousy and hatred he conceived for males he perceived to have out-competed him – what IS misogynistic is the particular metric he measured their competition against, i.e. ‘success’ with women. In the same way that his competitiveness with other men was not inherently racist, but his particular bete noire against black and asian men who he perceived as outcompeting him (because he felt he, having white heritage, was more inherently ‘worthy’ than them) was racist.

(Oh, quick litmus test: The draft, when instituted, targets only men. Misogynistic because it says women are not fit to fight, or misandric because men are rounded up and sent to kill and die for being men? If you think both, what is the ‘main’ factor?)

The draft goes beyond misandry and misogyny, and is a flat out human rights issue, i.e. no-one should be forced against their will to serve in the armed forces. As a point of interest, the draft targets women in Israel too, but in a bizarre and sexist twist, men must serve three years and women only two – what drugs was someone on when they drew up that statute?

Wherever forced service exists, it is abhorrent. In the case of a male-only draft, it is also sexist, in both directions, but the men are most profoundly getting the worst of it because they are the ones being forced to fight against their will. However, in a situation where service is voluntary and women are denied the right to serve, it is obviously women who are getting the worst of it, as they are having a choice denied them that men have (although why anyone in their right mind, male or female, would wish to take up that option I cannot for the life of me conceive).

I dispute, however, that in the case of a male-only forced draft men are rounded up to fight and die ‘for being men’. They are being rounded up to fight and die because the powerful in society want someone to fight on their behalf, and they see men as being the only ones capable of fighting, women being weak and useless. So again, fundamentally, it is sexism against women (women are weak, feeble, impractical) that is causing the men to suffer (as feminism keeps saying, patriarchy hurts us all). They are not being punished for BEING men, but they are suffering because of it. A subtle distinction, and not remotely important in terms of the practical upshot, but there it is nonetheless.

I think we would make a lot more progress if you would quote me in full and not reformulate my sentences with elipses, square brackets and cherry-picking to suit yourself. Once again what you suggest I’ve said bears very little relation to what I actually said.

And you can leave off the appeal to your own personal experience as somehow being the universal reference point which must be disproved by evidence (“I simply do not detect this pervasive, misogynic culture you say is out there. Hence my earlier complaint that those fingering that culture have so far given no evidence of its existence, much less the causal link”), as opposed to a single person’s subjective experience. There is ample evidence for sexism and misogyny as a formative part of almost every human culture. Until the last 100 years or so, this was universal and explicit. In some western cultures, it is now instead structural and implicit, but there are still plenty of countries around the world where it is openly practised and publicly legislated, as plain as the nose on your face. A misogynistic culture doesn’t simply give women the vote and magically become an egalitarian one; there is a lot of lingering poison still to leak out. Just because you haven’t personally enacted, experienced or witnessed cultural misogyny (or acknowledged what misogyny you have witnessed as such), does not mean it is not there – ask a woman.

You can also leave out the patronising ad homs about my personal experiences, about which you know nothing. Thanks!

@Sans-sanity 215
Very good post. You even convinced me that there can be some justification for talking about ‘misandry’ in this context – which I absolutely would have refused beforehand.

But strong message of society towards men that we should treat each other as competitiors in everything. […]The misandric message that men are in a competition, and that other men are obstacles to our success and insults to our failure, is dangerous.

I cannot see how you get this to be ‘misandric’, though. It is in the male role and culture, but is that not ours? I certainly agree that men tend to fit each other into a hierarchy – it fits with the sociolinguistics (thank you, again, Deborah Tannen) and it fits with my self-observation. You always have a sort of unconscious measure of relative status for other men, in a way you do not have with women. I do not claim this is either good or bad, it is simply an observation. I will note, though, that it is not necessarily zero-sum. Status is zero-sum, but respect is not. Also I think it has a lot of influence on how you tend to see women. Women, being women, are partly outside the hierarchy, and are valued to some extent on other criteria. That works for both good and bad. Women are not judged as harshly if the do not measure up – it is nice to have some women around even if they are not contributing much to the debate. On the other hand most women might not get the full credit in terms of status for their positive contributions either. Again, this is simply a description, not a recommendation.

The thing is, these mechanisms are so ingrained that I, for one, am unable to imagine a male role without them. Even more, it seems to me that ditching them completely would amount to throwing away what we are and starting from zero as something totally unrelated. Which I would greatly deplore. Rather as I imagine an Aborigine would deplore it if his culture vanished and his descendants became indistinguishable from the standard Sydneyites.

“I simply do not detect this pervasive, misogynic culture you say is out there…

Cavanaugh actually said that? On a blog whose author explicitly admits the existence of said misogynistic culture? Wow, you gotta work hard to stay that clueless.

Raging, you really are being stupid now. Yes, yes, yes, Rodger explicitly hated women. He also explicitly hated men. Therefore he did not, as Pitch said, explicitly hate just one gender.

He had a hatred for women that he did not have for men. He may have had a different hatred for men (citation required), but that doesn’t negate his explicitly stated hatred for women. Hitler hated lots of different ethnic groups, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t antisemitic.

Well, you know, ye old RadFemHub was great for that, including several serious articles on how to bring about gendercide, total emasculation of young boys, and so much more lovely stuff like that. Sadly, they are no longer publically accessible because too many of their members, all women of course, actually worked in both educational and childcare facilities, and parents were begining to get concerned. So RadFemHub had to hide their truly rabid hate behind a drawbridge.

Ah yes, all the evidence that supports your hateful accusations was magically erased, from the Internet that never seems to forget anything else, by a pervasive conspiracy of feminazis, and even though the computer systems involved were mostly operated by men, not women, those men were forced to cooperate by the promise of sexual favors? Is that really your excuse? Because I gotta say I’ve heard more plausible bollocks from the Larouchies. Maybe you could throw in something about hedgehogs, crop-circles and chemtrails.

And besides, other MRAs who spout accusations like yours have actually managed to come up with a few measly citations here and there. Not nearly enough to prove their accusations, of course, but more than enough to disprove your silly-assed “a bitch ate my homework” story.

I’d just like to mention what complete pains in the arses you two are to converse with.

Are you courteous? Yes.
Insightful? Yes.
Open minded? Yes.

But never have I met two people will such difficult names to consistently spell correctly! And what, may I ask, do the pair of you have against the use of capital letters, hmm? 🙂

….Anyway.

lelapaletute, any disagreements we still have seem to be minor and to largely stem from personal semantic preference and perspective. Thanks for the excellent discussion (except for your unforgivable use of the “P” word… Arghle Farghl Blagh! 😉

gjenganger, You make a good point. It would be truer to say that the competition can turn resentful and toxic which leads to misandry, rather than that the competition itself is misandric. After all, in situations where we see greater gender equality we tend to get men and women increasingly competing against each other (on an individual level, not as men v. women) with the same fervour they previously only engaged in competition within their gender. Thanks for the excellent discussion as well. 🙂

Not much good tends to happen at Hetpat after the first 50 or so comments, so this has been a welcome change!

Having hatred for anything isnt the problem. In fact, even stating your so called hatreds out loud isnt the problem. The problem is when you take said hatred and express it with violence. The fact that this young man talked and read some online hate isnt the problem. The problem was his total disconnect from the reality of a society that expressly forbids physical violence against each other. The fact that he used this on both people he knew personally and others with absolutely no personal connection really does so he was “FUCKING NUTS” regardless of what some people want to think about mental illness. You can all go back to your theories about misogyny and misandry now.

Yes, it is. This kid had serious problems long before he shot anyone, and the hatred he expressed was a maladaptive response to his problems, it compounded his problems, and it became a problem in and of itself. So yes, having and expressing hatred IS a problem, long before it slides into actual violence.

No Bee, expressing hatred with violence is the problem. I can call you every name in the book but if I dont cross the line then it is not illegal. Unless of course you want to eliminate the cornerstone of a free society, which is, free speech. Personally I want to know who the hateful fuckers are that way I can keep track of them and maybe, just maybe, influence them to not think that way.

I think we would make a lot more progress if you would quote me in full and not reformulate my sentences with elipses, square brackets and cherry-picking to suit yourself.

Nonsense. I employed brackets only to adjust the tense or grammar to fit within my comment (e.g., “transforming” to “[transform]”.) My use of ellipses did not alter the essence of your positions, merely omitted extraneous verbiage to focus on the points in question. Both are standard practice.

And you can leave off the appeal to your own personal experience as somehow being the universal reference point which must be disproved by evidence…. Just because you haven’t personally enacted, experienced or witnessed cultural misogyny … does not mean it is not there – ask a woman.

Ah, I get it. One man’s experience means nothing, one woman’s experience is sufficient proof. You really have a great knack for talking out of both sides of your mouth at once!

You can also leave out the patronising ad homs about my personal experiences, about which you know nothing.

You describe a world where women are afraid to either extend or receive sexual advances, and where men seethe with resentment whenever they are denied access to sex. If that’s not your personal experience, then where on earth did you get that idea?

“I simply do not detect this pervasive, misogynic culture you say is out there…

Raging Bee wrote:

Cavanaugh actually said that? On a blog whose author explicitly admits the existence of said misogynistic culture? Wow, you gotta work hard to stay that clueless.

I engaged in an intellectual discussion with someone I disagree with on certain points. I know, bizarre, huh?

NB. how Ally ends his “Nuance” post:

I have no problem with people disagreeing with me on any point, telling me I am wrong. But very few people have been doing that over the past 24 hours. They haven’t been telling me I am wrong, they’ve just been saying “how dare you say that?”

Here, Ally put forth the proposition that the combination of entitlement + bullying was the catalyst for Rodger, and raises the question, what can we do to prevent this in future? Though initially disinclined to see bullying as the key, I was eager to hear a further defense of this proposition. Sadly, much of this comment thread has been taken up by ‘whadidya expect? All men are scum, QED.’

You, Bee, have contributed nothing of substance to this discussion, rather seeking only to shout down any & all who dare oppose your views.

Nonsense. You completely alter the meaning of what I say by leaving out the ‘extraneous verbiage’ (or, as I like to call it, ‘content’) of my argument to something you can disagree with. Copying and pasting the relevant sections would be a lot quicker and clearer; you choose a far more convoluted method so that you can twist my words to suit yourself.

Ah, I get it. One man’s experience means nothing, one woman’s experience is sufficient proof. You really have a great knack for talking out of both sides of your mouth at once!

I didn’t actually say that though, did I? I said because YOU had not personally experienced something does not mean it does not exist, and if you were to ask a woman (e.g. me) I would tell you that, in my personal experience, it does. My personal anecdote is worth as much as yours, i.e. not much – but if your anecdote is sufficient to make a case, then surely my opposite anecdote is sufficient to nullify it, leaving us back where we began?

Therefore I don’t base my entire argument on my own personal experience, as I am aware it is (i) individual, not general and (ii) subjective. I don’t sit on my personal perception like a despot on a throne and demand that you prove me wrong. I refer you to the body of independent evidence (not personal anecdote) that proves me right.

You describe a world where women are afraid to either extend or receive sexual advances, and where men seethe with resentment whenever they are denied access to sex. If that’s not your personal experience, then where on earth did you get that idea?

Sigh. This whole ‘independent evidence’ and ‘needing more than one’s own personal set of experiences and circumstances in order to make general pronouncements’ concept is really eluding you, isn’t it? I ‘get the idea’ that women in aggregate are afraid to extend or accept sexual advances from the vast volumes of research that has been done on societal attitudes e.g. the general view held by a huge proportion of society that flirtatious women are partially to blame if they are raped: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4453820.stm); and resultant behaviour the relative willingness of men and women to accept an offer of sex with a stranger: (http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf) – these are just quick Google results as should actually be working, and only illustrative examples. If you’re so damn wedded to anecdotal evidence, see http://www.everydaysexism.com for a plethora of women willing to testify that a culture of misogyny is far from a fairy-story (personally, I prefer the studies, but whatever floats your boat).

As for the idea that men are seething with resentment whenever they are denied access to sex, I don’t think I said they are in general – what I actually said was that

If men were socialised to see sex as a pleasurable activity for both sexes, rather than a two-way yardstick based on quantity (for men, the more sex, the more ‘alpha’; for women, the more sex, the bigger ‘slut’) then perhaps they would not be tying themselves in psychological knots if they were still virgins at 22, or feeling hard done by when they went home from the club by themselves, and transforming that self-loathing into loathing of the women who ‘deny’ them sex

This very clearly in the context of Rodger, who explicitly did have those hang-ups and resentments – I was not saying this was true of all men, everywhere, all the time. Yes for the avoidance of all doubt/bad-faith reading, I should have said “if more men were socialised” and “perhaps some men would not be tying themselves in knots”. I apologise, I was typing on the hoof, but I think most people would have been pretty clear what I intended.

No, that is not doing your homework, Bee. That is one quote of 141 pages. What about the other quote where he muses to kill all men for his own pleasure, or the one where he thinks of using his apartment as a base of operations to lure unsuspecting men to first torture them and then kill them? If that’s his hatred of women talking, then, I feel he was misled. Or confused.

“Plenty?” Really? “Citation required” would be an understatement here. You need to show us the “female Slymepit” where men find a relentless tide of rape-threats, death-threats, old sick unfunny body-function jokes, and repetitive willful vindictive ignorance directed at them 24/7, no matter how many times it’s called out and refuted. I have yet to hear of even ONE feminist who shows even 1% of the hatred I’ve seen from MRAs. The fact that you keep on repeating the same empty accusation, even though it’s never been backed up with any specifics or evidence, once again shows what a ridiculous uneducable piece of work you really are. If you have to wallow in fantasies about women, can’t you at least wallow in PLEASANT fantasies?

Haha. The “female Slymepit.” Very good. And then you actually have the gall to say I am “uneducable.” (It’s actually “ineducable”, but whatever.) Amazing. Just incredible.

Because hatred isnt the problem. Expressing hatred isnt the problem. Being violent because of your hatred is THE problem. Other than that hatred just makes most people who have it miserable and the people around them pretty miserable too. Until it becomes violent or oppressive its just a uncomfortable nuisance. You cant police peoples hate or love for that matter, though the PC crowd is trying real hard to have all hate speech a crime. Slippery slope with that thought.

@JT 238
There is a little more. Once somebody is killing class enemies or apostates or stuck-up bitches, you can no longer say that class enemies or apostates or stuck-up bitches deserve to be killed, or that it is understandable that some people want to kill them. Not, at least, without being deemed to support the killings. Sometimes that means that perfectly decent, reasonable, hate-free people can no longer say the things they mean (1970’s socialism is the best example I know), but it just can’t be helped.

Of course they can say they deserved to be killed after the fact, which pretty freaking crass, disgusting and a whole host of other bad, BUT they didnt say they were going to kill them. Nor did they say others should go out and kill them. You can also say that you still hate all those enemies, apostates and stuck-up bitches.

1) You or your friends write on a debating site that those stuck-up bitches deserve to be killed, or that it would be no surprise if somebody goes and kills those stuck-up bitches

2) Some regular reader of your web site goes out and actually does kill some of those stuck-up bitches.

Then I, and most of the rest of the world, will hold you and your friends morally responsible for some small part of the result. On a purely egoistical level: Do you really want to be explaining away something like that with the world press looking on?

You do realize there are tons of people in this world who could give two shits about yours or my moral makeup? Whether we find them repugnant is neither here nor there. If they are not directly inciting violence or perpetrating it themselves its irrelevant if we think its morally reprehensible.

lela, note that nowhere did I claim that sexism or misogyny never occurs — I instead doubted it was “ubiquitous”, “pervasive”, or even “prevalent”. I base this not just on my own experience. You urge me to “ask a woman.” I’ve asked several — my mother, my sister, my girlfriends, platonic friends, work colleagues. All say they’ve experienced scant or no sexism. My mom said, yes there was some in the past, but it’s improved dramatically over the years. OK, I do have one friend who believes all men either want you only for sex, or couldn’t care less for you. She had a deadbeat dad and a deadbeat stepdad, and now works as an exotic dancer. She considers me an anomaly.

Someone’s anecdotal, contradictory experience can only disprove that something is not universal. Yet, if my private sample group is representative of the general population, than I’d be correct to infer that sexism & misogyny are not very common at all.

To persuade me otherwise, you must provide evidence quantifying the extent of sexism/misogyny. You offer:

* everydaysexism.com, where “a plethora” of women complain about things like having their ass grabbed in pubs. How much is a “plethora”? Is it a majority? What percentage of women’s trips to pubs result in an ass-grabbing? What percentage of men grab strange women’s asses in pubs? What percent think that’s ok? How many women rarely if ever experience this? We don’t know, because they can’t be bothered to create a blog called everydaythingsarefine.com.

* a story on a 2005 Amnesty International survey that found c. 25% of (UK citizens??) “believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously”. Meaning 75% believe the victim is not to blame at all. Not a very good example of “pervasive misogyny”;

* A paper on two studies conducted in 1978 and 1982, on a grand total of 192 subjects, which found college men were more eager to sleep with a stranger than college women were. I’m guessing they shut down all sex difference research for good in 1983, once this conclusive study was released.

You also allude to “ample evidence” for sexism/misogyny as a “structural and implicit” part of Western society. I eagerly await examples of that.

And you said something that was laughably dead wrong and devoid of intellect.
You can intone your dogma’s mantra until you’re blue in the face, but until you offer up some evidence & rational argument, you persuade no one.

As I told you, those were just the first Google results that came up in the course of a busy day. You may have all the livelong day to devote to this debate, I however have to work so did not have time to go out doing your research for you today. Give me until the weekend and I will find you some more recent studies (or, you know, you could look yourself). However, given you clearly take issue with the quality of the two EXAMPLES mentioned (a bit rich, given that your evidence so far is “what I think and what my mates say”) you might want to give me some parameters for the type of study you would accept as valid, to save me wasting my time. How recent does it have to be? What size sample would you consider appropriate? What proportion of the population DOES need to blame the victim rather than the rapist for rape before that can be considered significant? etc.

And as is QUITE clear from what I wrote (this again) I was NOT offering everydaysexism as legitimate ‘evidence’ – I was offering it satirically to you as you seem so utterly wedded to anecdotal reports (‘my friends and my sister and my mum say’) rather than systematic appraisal of evidence. As I said, I prefer studies.

Then I, and most of the rest of the world, will hold you and your friends morally responsible for some small part of the result.

I think this is a misunderstanding of how the term responsibility should be used. I think we should only invoke responsibility when there is a clear and significant causal connection between your action and the result that could have been forseen by you. So if some guy gets e.g. some person is frustrated after getting rejected by someone and rants on their blog about how xe wanted to slap xir, I do not think we should hold xir responsible for someone else reading xir blog and actually comiting a violent action because of it. In this case the causal connection is given and one could argue that xe could have realized that the probability of something like this happening is non zero. However the insignificant nature of the causal relation is reflected in how low tis probability actually is. So I would not hold xir responsible.

My justification for using responsibility in this way: Humans are very bad a continually adding tiny numbers. We are not silicone computers that could keep track of tiny responsibilities. So a practice of actively noting or remembering such very many such tiny probabilities would not only be futile but exceedingly effortful, definietely netting a negative opportunity cost.

And as is QUITE clear from what I wrote (this again) I was NOT offering everydaysexism as legitimate ‘evidence’ – I was offering it satirically to you as you seem so utterly wedded to anecdotal reports (‘my friends and my sister and my mum say’) rather than systematic appraisal of evidence.

Quite prescient of you, considering I didn’t mention ‘my friends and my sister and my mum’ until after you linked to everydaysexism.com.

You really do argue in very bad faith.

I don’t think you’re arguing in bad faith. I just think you’re used to talking out of your ass, and are now having to scramble to back it up with logic, evidence, and a modicum of consistency.

But at least we’re now in agreement that concrete evidence is required! I’ll check back this weekend to see what you’ve got to substantiate your claim that sexism & misogyny are “structural and implicit” components of our society.

@sheaf249
I would not put the threshold anywhere as low as is your example (or, likely, as Ally would), but let me show you where I am getting it from.

In the 1970’s there were quite a lot of people talking about the violent oppressive nature of capitalist society and how understandable and useful it would be that the oppressed massed took to violent opposition. In reality that was just (idiotic) social theorising, but once there were groups going around killing, kidnapping and kneecapping in the name of socialism, this kind of talk became in effect active moral support for terrorism. So the left got its act together and made clear that they were NOT in favour of this kind of gangs, at the cost of having to avoid some rhetoric that was in intent innocent and, on their own terms. justified.

In more modern times you hear people saying that when the west make wars and kill Muslims in Muslim lands it is only to be expected that Muslims start killing on their own streets in return, and when people deliberately trample the religious sensibilities of Muslims by caricaturing their prophet, they have only themselves to blame if retribution seeks them out.

In both cases this kind of talk is fanning the flames, and the talkers are either deliberately supporting the violence but too shy to say it clearly, or sympathetic to the killers’ cause and recklessly indifferent to the effect of their words. I would not say that they were individually responsible in the sense they caused each act of mayhem (you are right on that point), but they are contributing to making more violence happen by giving the killers the idea that they are acting on behalf of a large and sympathetic public. They seem to be happy with the results, so they can share the blame, if not the actual responsibility. I do not read the manosphere (not interesting to me), but I notice that Rodgers was quoted as saying that many clearly thought like him, just that the others were too gutless to do anything about it. In this case it all came from inside him and he was not sufficiently connected too any MRA blogs for them to have any significant influence. But when there are people who maim and kill for beliefs that you share, you have to make it clear that you are NOT standing with them in their actions. It is no longer enough to be neutral.

n the 1970′s there were quite a lot of people talking about the violent oppressive nature of capitalist society and how understandable and useful it would be that the oppressed massed took to violent opposition. In reality that was just (idiotic) social theorising, but once there were groups going around killing, kidnapping and kneecapping in the name of socialism, this kind of talk became in effect active moral support for terrorism. So the left got its act together and made clear that they were NOT in favour of this kind of gangs, at the cost of having to avoid some rhetoric that was in intent innocent and, on their own terms. justified.

In more modern times you hear people saying that when the west make wars and kill Muslims in Muslim lands it is only to be expected that Muslims start killing on their own streets in return, and when people deliberately trample the religious sensibilities of Muslims by caricaturing their prophet, they have only themselves to blame if retribution seeks them out.

I think these are two separate examples. In the first case you have people explicitely arguing for the utility of violence. In the second case you do not. I think it is a distinction worth making. I think in both cases the rhetoric may have increased the probability of violence.

However in both cases comparison with the manosphere is not appropriate since the manosphere does not have unifying principles rhetoric or positions. This is because manosphere is mostly synonymous with non femiists interested in gender related issues and /or dating advice.

I do not read the manosphere (not interesting to me)

Sorry to come off as condescending, but it is rather obvious that you dont. The claims that are made about the manosphere from outside are not reflected by what is common practice in the inside. For example Ally claimed “Away from AVfM, you can also go to places like r/mensrights and on any given day there will be people posting hideously misogynistic, violent thoughts, and often they won’t be particularly challenged on them.”
This is just untrue and provably so. In a discussion with Freja similar claims popped up so I decided to do an experiment. I “trolled” /r/mr with an alternative account, leaving “hideously misogynistic, violent thoughts” (not my own, mostly mirrored versions of things other eople had said on different websites) I was universally downvoted and banned after 6 comments.

But when there are people who maim and kill for beliefs that you share, you have to make it clear that you are NOT standing with them in their actions. It is no longer enough to be neutral.

I do not disagree with this, though Iwill add: This is not what this discussion has been about. The mrm and Rodgers do not agree and do not have similar beliefs, in fact some of the more egregious positions of Rodgers, like the utter extinction of most males (to my knowledge there is no analogous position regarding women) more closely reflect some rad fem positions. I think that claim that they are similar in any significant way are mostly misrepresentations and in some cases chillingly deliberate. I think there is no use in standing neutral to these attacks.

It is indeed wrong to use this Rodgers as a stick to beat the mrm with. I agree. More to the point, so does Ally, that was the point of his post. As for how much mrm online material would look really bad in hindsight if one of the regular readers (which Rodgers was not) went on a killing spree, well if there is not much of it so much the better.

You are quite right that I am speaking from ignorance, indeed I make a point of not hiding it. All I can say is that life is short and that what little I have seen did not inspire me to learn more. That famous Paul Elam quote may not say what it says in the edited version, but even the full quote does not fill me with a desire to share the wisdom of Paul Elam and his friends. I sort of started browsing on one of the top MRM sites a while ago (forget which one), and one of the first things I found, in a section with featured posts presumably put there to showcase what they had to offer, was a long spiel about how the women had deserted the writer, and how he was building up his life and how one day they would be flocking back to be with him and then HE would reject THEM, and then they would be SORRY. I have had similar fantasies myself, but seeing that featured on a political site made me decide that reading this site was not a productive use of my limited time. I find it hard enough to keep up with the debate on Ally’s blog.

So, if you do not mind handing out free advice to tourists, where should I start looking to see what the MRM has to offer?

Quite prescient of you, considering I didn’t mention ‘my friends and my sister and my mum’ until after you linked to everydaysexism.com.

Not explicitly, no, but you did attempt to appeal to a norm justified only by you and the people you know, which is precisely WHY I satirically mentioned EDS. Please see the relevant portions of the conversation here (I’ve even bolded the most significant bits to save you the trouble of remembering what you actually said):

@Matt Cavanaugh

You, @216:

For another, because I simply do not detect this pervasive, misogynic culture you say is out there.

Oh well then, that must mean it isn’t there, in spite of all the studies of and social commentary by people actually subject to it which say it is.

You, also @216:

Earlier,(194) you lament

“If men were socialised to see sex as a pleasurable activity for both sexes….”

I was. And in my relationships, it most definitely is.

Once again, hurrah! That’s how it is for you! Therefore it’s like that for the majority, definitely, right?

You, also @216:

What a terribly jaded view of sex & romantic relations! I’m truly sorry if that has been your experience, but it most definitely has not been mine, nor that of the overwhelming majority of people I know.

If that’s not your personal experience, then where on earth did you get that idea? Implication being, only personal experience could inform one’s world view.

All of which leading to me saying, @235:

I ‘get the idea’ that women in aggregate are afraid to extend or accept sexual advances from the vast volumes of research that has been done on societal attitudes e.g. the general view held by a huge proportion of society that flirtatious women are partially to blame if they are raped: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4453820.stm); and resultant behaviour the relative willingness of men and women to accept an offer of sex with a stranger: (http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf) – these are just quick Google results as should actually be working, and only illustrative examples. If you’re so damn wedded to anecdotal evidence, see http://www.everydaysexism.com for a plethora of women willing to testify that a culture of misogyny is far from a fairy-story (personally, I prefer the studies, but whatever floats your boat).

Please note I explicitly stated the two examples I gave were not necessarily the best work out there, nor were they the ONLY sources of evidence for cultural misogyny – they were just the first hits I could yank out of Google on my lunch break (sorry, I may be a card-carrying feminazi, but I don’t keep a constantly updated misogyny file on my person at all times). Maybe they’re a bit old; maybe they’re a bit limited in their cohorts; but as published, peer-reviewed studies they are certainly a damn site more conclusive than the ‘evidence’ for your viewpoint you have thus far presented, i.e. “me and the overwhelming majority of people that I know”.

I don’t think you’re arguing in bad faith. I just think you’re used to talking out of your ass, and are now having to scramble to back it up with logic, evidence, and a modicum of consistency.

Leaving aside the ad hom and supposition about my character (about which, I would again like to emphasise, you know nothing), not to mention the galloping hypocrisy, of this statement (consistency indeed, coming from you), it is simply that cultural misogyny is so obviously present, both in the West and around the world, I do not always feel the need to evidence it before I discuss it, in the same way that when I say ‘gosh, hasn’t it been a wet summer’ I don’t feel the need to whip out comparative studies from the Met Office. It’s not SURPRISING we still have cultural misogyny in the UK/US, given we have only relatively recently accepted as law such things as ‘women are full citizens and therefore have the right to vote in elections’ and ‘women have inherent ineluctable human rights, therefore it IS possible for a husband to rape his wife’. It takes time and effort for these legislative messages to filter down through the justice system, politics, social discourse, from parents to their children, and finally that little bit of hind-brain in each individual that is constantly trying to make assessments based on first impressions. Expecting it NOT to be there is like expecting the US not to have lingering issues with race when slavery was ended less than 200 years ago.

But at least we’re now in agreement that concrete evidence is required! I’ll check back this weekend to see what you’ve got to substantiate your claim that sexism & misogyny are “structural and implicit” components of our society.

And I look forward seeing what you bring to the table to substantiate your claim that it is not. However, you still haven’t given me your parameters for the studies you will accept as valid; as the two peer-reviewed articles you have presented so far clearly don’t cut the mustard with you, it’s only fair you let me know your limits so I don’t waste my time.

Sorry, been so busy squabbling never got round to saying thank you for your courteous post! Good speaking with you. Contrary to the impression I may give around here sometimes, I really do prefer to find common ground than to bump heads…

Sorry about the silly name – it’s mean to be a song title, but it’s misspelled anyway (should be ‘pala‘). I am perfectly happy with lela as an abbreviation! 😛

Without taking sides yet I should point out that the burden of proof isn’t on Matt; you are the one making the claim so Matt’s is the ‘default’ position.

Fair dos – was letting my irritation get the better of me. I don’t actually want him to prove that cultural misogyny isn’t a problem, because I know full well it bloody is. I just feel a bit like an geologist being asked by a creationist to prove that the world wasn’t made in 7 days, and then being refuted with ‘Well you SAY there are all these dinosaur fossils but I never saw them and neither did anybody I know, so there!’

If you want people to agree with you that “cultural misogyny ” exists, then you may have to agree with the position that presently “cultural misandry” also exists.

Leaving aside whether I believe it does or it doesn’t, why should that be the case? Something is either the case or it isn’t (or rather, one believes something is the case or one doesn’t); people shouldn’t predicate their agreement or disagreement to an argument on concessions to a different argument – “OK, I’ll believe in evolution but only if you concede to believe in the big bang.” By saying that yes, there is a culture of misogyny, one is not denying or refuting that there may also be a culture of misandry; so why should your agreement to the former require my concession to the latter?

Its called team play. You know, acknowledging that we all have experiences and how can we work on them together. One of challenges I have with certain individuals on here is that it is usually/mostly just one way, as in, theirs. There is no requirement for anyone its just to realize and not be surprised when people dont here what youre saying either.

FTR, I do not claim that sexism or misogyny don’t exist, or that they are not a problem where & when they exist. I just don’t believe they are ubiquitous, that our institutions & culture are inherently misogynist & promote rape, or that all men are ‘trained’ by them to be sexists, women-haters, rapists & killers.

And, yes, the burden of proof lies on those who makes such claims.

lela, you criticize me for noting that, in my personal experience, sexism is not prevalent, then turn right around again to say in your experience, it is. For example, stating “cultural misogyny is so obviously present,” implies obvious to lela. So instead of questioning my honesty (or, Raging Bee, my intelligence) or assuming I must be callous & indifferent, tell me what sort of things you see, as obvious as the rain outside the window, that convince you. And I’ll either haven’t noticed them before, or have noticed them but interpret them differently.

You were displeased when I wondered whether your impression of interpersonal relations between the sexes was based on personal experience, so you gave me the first three hits on a quick google search. Since these three sources can’t have influenced you prior to finding them just now by chance, and as you do not keep an “updated misogyny file”, what has influenced your views? College courses? Lectures? Books? Conversations? Or, again, your personal observations?

for clarity, the first two results were from the Google searches – EDS is common knowledge and as I have stated, in my view, not a valid source of evidence (although I approve of its therapeutic benefit in as much as it gives women a sense that they are not facing these issues alone, and that such behaviour as is documented there is not acceptable or something they just have to ignore or submit to). Like any open project, content is variable – there are incidents described which I think are rank misogyny, and others I think are not but merely bad manners/misunderstandings – but then, I wouldn’t consider my personal assessment as the final arbiter of misogyny.

Moving on from that: the Google Scholar searches I ran were:

(women OR girls) AND (rape OR “sexual assault”) AND (blame OR culpability OR culpable OR responsible OR responsibility) AND (flirt OR dress OR drink OR drunk OR kiss OR alone)

and

(women OR girls OR men OR boys) AND (“casual sex” OR proposition OR “sexual advance”) AND (reluctance OR accept OR refuse OR “positive response” OR “negative response”) AND (“societal attitudes” OR culture OR norms)

These produced a lot of results, the two I sent you being the ones on the first page that most closely matched what I was looking for. I ran these specific searches because I was generally aware of the results of these studies (or studies like them), because I follow sex and gender related news and research, because it is of interest to me.

FWIW, I did a Masters’ degree in Women’s Studies, so have actually studied the subjects in question (so yes, books, lectures, research for uni courses) and was at that time more actively familiar with (and had better access to) the relevant resources. I try not to mention this in debate forums like this, as for a certain portion of the debaters involved, the words ‘Masters in Women’s Studies’ automatically disqualify me from serious consideration – they seem to think that the fact I am concerned enough about gender issues to have studied them academically prevents me from being able to have an objective or intelligent opinion about them. Not sure if you will be one of those, or one who will respect me more for the time and effort I expended earning my qualification and thus give my words more weight, or if it will make no difference to you at all; it doesn’t really make a difference to me. But you did ask.

And yes, as you say, my personal experiences and conversations with friends and relatives did have a bearing – they got me interested; they got me (sometimes) bewildered and angry; so I went out and tried to find out more, to make sense of them and to put them in perspective. I am confident that the views I currently hold as a result of this are defendable, but I always try to be open to persuasion to a new position. I did a complete 180 on my views on transgender issues as a result of my studies, and became a better and more open-minded person in the process. Ally more than any other writer has opened my eyes to the challenges that men and boys face as such, and how these problems variously intertwine with and exist independently of those faced by women and girls. Gjenganger and I have had some reasonably fruitful if not conclusive discussions; I can change my mind, and broaden my outlook. I’m really not an ideologue, whatever you might think of me.

Finally, this:

FTR, I do not claim that sexism or misogyny don’t exist, or that they are not a problem where & when they exist. I just don’t believe they are ubiquitous, that our institutions & culture are inherently misogynist & promote rape, or that all men are ‘trained’ by them to be sexists, women-haters, rapists & killers.

I didn’t actually say they were ubiquitous; I said there was a culture of misogyny. Our Western culture is made up of many aspects, of which misogyny is just one – but I would say, a powerful and corrosive one. You may disagree with the importance I attribute to it; but how significant or damaging you think misogyny is in our society (its culture, its institutions) will be informed by how much you suffer because of it. What would your benchmark be for it being ‘pervasive’?

As for all men being ‘trained’ to be sexists, women-haters, rapists and killers, I really don’t think I said anything of the kind. I said the current cultural environment encourages sexist, misogynist attitudes, and it was sexist, misogynist attitudes that informed Rodger’s crimes. Which, it is plain, does not mean everyone who shares in such attitudes would commit such crimes, or that everyone within such a cultural environment would adopt those attitudes.

If you would still like me to amass some evidence for cultural misogyny over the weekend, what are the limits you place on a study for it to be worthy of consideration? A simple date range and sample size will suffice, since those were the things you took issue with, but if you have more specific requirements as to methodology then do let me know.

You may disagree with the importance I attribute to it; but how significant or damaging you think misogyny is in our society (its culture, its institutions) will be informed by how much you suffer because of it. What would your benchmark be for it being ‘pervasive’?

Keeping it all together for reference and relevance, but responding mostly to the bolded bits:

Yes, but that is the problem within an apparent majority of your (and many of our) arguments in that you are asssuming degree (of damage/effect) through and by personal experience and your personal reaction to it, a perspective that inevitably and for all of us will give a deeply, deeply skewed and almost certainly incorrect result, for a huge range of differing reasons not the least of which is that we all react to and suffer from certain experience/input in deeply differing ways and deeply differing degrees none of which are necessarily relevant to the degree in which that input is significant or damaging in the overall objective experience or reality.

I know that that is a bit of a jumble. If you need me to clarify, let me know..

‘Masters in Women’s Studies’ automatically disqualify me from serious consideration – they seem to think that the fact I am concerned enough about gender issues to have studied them academically prevents me from being able to have an objective or intelligent opinion about them.

Doesnt disqualify you from having an opinion. Very definately points to a one sided education/view in regards to gender issues. 😉

@JT” Can’t help what the uni chose to name of the course – there were actually two guys on my intake too, and the whole of the cohort spent a decent amount of lecture time lobbying the lecturers to change the name to Gender Studies, which would have far more accurately described the content of the course and been less exclusive…

*
Is it safe to assume that you & I both agree that sexism & misogyny exist to some extent in Western society? And what needs to be sorted out is the extent? As society has limited resources, the response to any problem ought be commensurate to the severity and breadth of the problem. That cannot be ensured unless the problem is quantified. So far, I’ve seen no serious effort to do so by feminist activists. Yet what they call for is nothing short of a cultural revolution.

*

I’ve familiarized myself a bit with women’s/gender studies and the works & theories of its leading voices. I’ll admit to being quite dubious of its methodologies and its conclusions. Only in recent years have the social sciences even attempted to employ rigorous scientific practices; the humanities don’t even bother. Also, most, if not all, feminist theory & gender studies seem grounded in postmodernism, which is at core anti-science. The theories are also plagued by internal contradictions. For example, that gender or even sex is just a social construct, a learned performance; yet somehow people are born gay or trans*.

That being said, it’s a genetic fallacy to dismiss out-of-hand any evidence or argument simply for its origin.

*

As for specific evidence, I’d suggest first simply listing some examples of where you spot ingrained sexism & misogyny in our society & institutions, then we can work from there. (It’s likely to elicit some citations from me!) But a 2005 study, showing only 25% in the UK blame rape victims, indicates perhaps “lingering” or “residual” sexism, but not “pervasive.” Especially as we don’t have the demographic breakouts, the exact phrasing of the question, or the trending over the intervening nine years. (I’m a bit of a stickler for all that, having worked in market research & political polling.)

@JT Which and all my colleagues did. As I said. Fundamentally it was because it was rather an old, established course, that was what they’d called it when they’d started it (‘gender’ issues being a lot more ghettoised back then) and the institution went in for ‘tradition’ in quite a big way (institutional-image-wise, in any case; the actual research and teaching it does is pretty well-regarded). We all pointed out that was beside the point, and that the course was neither exclusively for or about women, so they ought to change it. A number of the tutors (especially the male ones!) agreed. However, that decision got made administratively further up the chain. Bizarrely, the department also came under the languages faculty, for reasons that, once again, were lost in the mists of time and were not open to alteration. It was that sort of place 😛

Nope you cant, but you can be wise enough to question why they decided to choose a one gender title for the study of gender.

This sort of complaint is rather common. You see it in complaints about feminism’s name; in VAWA’s name; in women’s studies’ name; etc. At this point, I wonder if there is a group of people somewhere who think that the Matthew Shepard Act only applies to people named Matthew Shepard.

Noting the incongruity between the name and the subject matter is fine; stating that the name may give people false first impressions is fine; but the importance is vastly over emphasised.

Sorry for the silence – I did have a dig around for more recent studies, and unfortunately I have to confess I have been unable to find anything I can’t imagine you’d accept (although this is partly because you still haven’t told me what date range, sample size and methodology you would consider acceptable, and because I doubt our definitions of significance would agree – to me, for example, a study indicating that a quarter of the population think a woman is responsible for her own rape is evidence of colossal levels of misogyny – 1 in 4 people! – but you consider that merely ‘lingering’). I certainly don’t fancy tossing random examples of what I believe to be cultural misogyny into the air so that you can bat them away with a ‘too long ago!’ or ‘not significant’ or ‘methodologically unsound’ or ‘yes it’s misogyny, but how can it be structural if it’s not a majority?’ – I think clearer guidelines would be useful…

However, all excuses aside, I can’t devote any more time to it at present, this thread is getting old, and the wealth of clear incontestable evidence I had been expecting to find turns out not to be readily on hand (for whatever reason), so I’m going to have to put my hands up on this occasion and admit I cannot find any studies unequivocally demonstrating cultural misogyny in the present day. Not least because, on reflection, I think I need to firm up my definition of ‘cultural misogyny’ and figure out some quantifiable indicators – once I’ve done that, if my investigations yield more concrete results, I’ll report back – in fact, I might even report back first with my newly firmed-up definition and indicators, and see if we can agree on them first. Another less significant factor may be that the majority of academic research into it seems to take place in more extremely misogynist cultures, as I suppose well it might (found a lot more data on misogynist attitudes and rape myth acceptance in South Africa than in UK, for e.g.).

Pretty humbling climbdown for me, but a good one in that it has encouraged me to go away and clarify my thinking – looks like there may have been something in that challenge you issued to me about making statements without having the wherewithal to back them up!

Anyhow, thanks for the pull-up – productive arguing with you, even if it did get a bit heated.

… on reflection, I think I need to firm up my definition of ‘cultural misogyny’ and figure out some quantifiable indicators….

That would certainly help me know better where you are coming from, so to speak.

Pretty humbling climbdown for me, but a good one in that it has encouraged me to go away and clarify my thinking – looks like there may have been something in that challenge you issued to me about making statements without having the wherewithal to back them up!

Anyhow, thanks for the pull-up – productive arguing with you, even if it did get a bit heated.

Well, indeed, bravo for that. Kind of makes my feel like pulling in my hostilities a bit and trying for a somehwhat more humble approach myself.

lela,
Thank you for your open-mindedness and willingness to explore this topic. Misinterpretations of meaning and intention are an hazard of internet debates, more easily avoided in person.

I’ve also just come out of a busy weekend, with a busy week ahead, so can’t devote time to do this topic full justice right now. I still think it’s worth exploring further as our time permits. Ally has just posted a powerful piece on misrepresentation of statistics & sources; transitioning this discussion to that post might make sense.

I’ll take just a moment to revisit here the Amnesty International study. My search for the original report was fruitless, as all links to it at AI or the pollster (ICM) are dead. Of all the UK new reports (BBC, Telegraph, Guardian) I found, only the Daily Mail (!!) had a complete summary of the survey toplines (apologies for formatting):

Only 4 – 8 % believed a woman was fully responsible. These people definitely hold sexist views, no question. For the 14 – 29 % who responded with “partially responsible,” it’s less clear. If the thought behind that response was ‘had it coming/was asking for it’ then, yes, it’s sexist. But not if the thought was ‘a factor contributing to / had some role in precipitating.’ It would have been interesting to see if comparable responses were elicited for ‘a man is partially responsible for being mugged if he was: drunk; flashing a wad of bills; walking alone in a dangerous area.’ We can acknowledge that the behavior increased the risk of falling victim to the crime, without saying the victim deserved it, or excusing the criminal.

As I used to tell clients commissioning a survey, “I can find the answer to that for you, or I can give you the answer you want.'” Phrasing, question order, context, and more, can all influence responses. In the AI/ICM survey, changing “responsible” to “deserved” would’ve yielded vastly different results.

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t have the demographic splits. If the fully/partially responsible responses are clumped among older people, then we could take comfort that this is an antiquated view on its way out. If clumped among religious conservatives, it would not behoove us to browbeat secular UK citizens. If recent immigrants made up the bulk of these responses, that’d open up an whole other can of worms. (It is interesting to note that, per the Daily Mail, more women than men responded with “fully responsible.”)

Finally, other than a nearly identical 2008 survey of N Ireland college students, I can find no follow-ups. We are thus unable to assess the severity of this problem — whether these sexist views are on the wax, or rather are waning without need for further aggressive campaigning.

I’m late on this one. I just read the transcript (supposed) of this kid’s final video “Retribution” ( I believe it’s called). Whatever sympathy I may have had for this brat just went out the window never to return. One article that I read stated that this kid had been in therapy since the age of 8 and had “undisclosed mental illness”. What the hell does that even mean?! Sounds to me like the family and the therapists knew this kid was at minimum a sociopath (excuse me, but his concern about the police checking on him was they might find his guns and ammo and then he couldn’t exact revenge, yet he came across as normal so the cops left) and yet for some reason (oh, gee, we don’t want to saddle the poor thing with the stigma of mental illness) they didn’t institutionalize him. Now there’s a body count plus injuries.

Now to go slog through the Manifesto, goody. Oh, mental illness/personality disorders aside, this kid reeks of misogyny. I agree with misanthropy and If there’s any misandry, it stems from the misogyny.

Gods, this kid should have been put away years ago.

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